by RALPH WINFIELD
As I stated in an earlier article, what goes around comes around. Usually the time period is 20 to 30 years. Stray voltage is right on time.
I started hearing about this in the early 1970s when I worked as an agricultural applications engineer for Ontario Hydro. It was presumed at the time to be a greater problem in the United States, where they had many rural electrical co-operatives which did not have the quality of distribution line system we had in Ontario.
For example, in some remote rural areas, they only serviced customers with one line – the “hot line” – and all neutral current returned via the ground path. That single line system was also used in remote areas of rural Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but never in Ontario.