How does circuit completes when physical ground(earth) is used as neutral? [duplicate]

Question

In my locality, there is no neutral wire. Our transmission company runs only 3 wires (all lines/phases) and no neutral (4th wire) at all. Out of three, one runs to our houses. I know it sounds incorrect, but this is the case, they are saving the expense on the neutral wire.

Here we use earth wire (physically connected to the earth) in place of neutral. Each house has its own earthing/grounding. So our earth is our neutral. No difference at all. Everything works just fine, no problem at all.

I know that two wires with different potentials are required to create a potential difference. I also understand that we can run loads between two phases. But in this case, there is only one. Here we are running loads between a phase and a wire physically connected to the earth.

I know that current flows in a closed loop (it goes back to the source). But in this case, there is only one wire coming from the substation and another is physically grounded, how does the circuit even complete? Where is the closed loop?

Answer 1

But in this case, there is only one wire coming from sub-station and another is just physicaly grounded, how the circuit even completes? Where is the closed loop?

In my experience, any time a question is asked with a 'just' word used in it, that is where the problem lies. 'Just' tends to be used in the sense of 'with no consequence', or 'this is irrelevant information'.

'and another is just physically grounded'

Re-write that as 'and another is physically grounded'. It is connected to ground. It makes an electrical connection to ground, so that current flows into and out of that connection, with little voltage drop.

The ground connection works to hold the neutral wire at around 0v, approximately the same 0v as your nearby neighbours on different phases, and the same 0v as the generating company, or at least their nearest three phase grounded centre tap transformer. Although a current flow between different earth points will generate a potential difference, when the ground rods are long enough, and the water table is high enough, that voltage difference tends to be low. It's low enough that most of the voltage drop from the phases appears on your loads, rather than on your ground connection.