Neutral Vs Ground Bus Bar

Ground bus bar some service panels have a separate bus bar for ground wire connections instead of a neutral ground bus.

Neutral vs ground bus bar.

In any distribution panel there are individual bars for each termination. Ground is therefore universal reference which is always taken to be zero potential. Earth or ground wire is assumed to be at zero potential while the potential of neutral depends upon unbalance between the wires. In this case the ground bus is electrically connected to the neutral bus in main service panels only.

You can see this clearly in the picture below as there are multiple neutral wires feeding into a single screw in more than one instance in this spaghetti mess of wires. Personally i prefer to put them on separate buss bars usually there is one on each side of the box also while not specified in the codes i will never put both the white and ground wires under the same screw. The ground buss is in direct contact with the metal enclosure. The neutral is isolated from the metal enclosure.

The difference between a ground wire and neutral wire is often misunderstood. Under certain conditions a conductor used to connect to a system neutral is also used for grounding earthing of equipment and structures. In subpanels the ground bus and neutral bus are not connected to each other. Current carried on a grounding conductor can result in objectionable or dangerous voltages appearing on equipment enclosures.

Neutral is provided by the power company to make the path of electricity closed. The problem primarily comes from the inappropriately named neutral wire. It is true that according to code if it is your entrance or main panel you can put neutral and ground wires on the same bus. A double tapped neutral is when more than one neutral wire is fed into a single screw terminal on the neutral bus bar in the main electric panel.