I'll bet if you look around the pole you'll see a bare copper wire about a #6 stapled to the pole and going down into the ground.At my house, the local transformer is fed from a kilovolt line and it must be using a neutral wire or an earth ground. I can tell because only one energized wire is approching and it has 2-disk insulators.
Looks about the same as in the diagram I postedWould you consider the transformer schematic on this web page to be accurate?
http://www.utterpower.com/household_power.htm
As #12 said, the Red line is neutral, which is ground, which is connected to earth. It's all one and the same, in this scenario.So in post #11, the red line is actually terra firma earth, and not an actual wire?
So you're saying that there is a neutral wire returning to the power generator, like in the below picture?The current travels on a grounded conductor called a wire to get back to the generating section. The local ground is just a safety ground, not a current carrying ground. The red wires you put in that last drawing forgot to include the current carrying neutral wire.