I’ve never seen something like this and I’m hoping someone can either confirm or deny that this is a major problem. The photo shows all the neutral circuit wires connected where the feed neutral wire should be (not to mention all the ground wires connected to the lug next door), and the neutral feed is nowhere to be found.
I see enough stuff wrong in that one little picture that you can safely defer that whole thing to an electrician. Looks like some serious DIY to the rescue work there.
Don’t just stop there. Why is this dangerous? I can guess three things.
if the ground wire to the panel is cut, everything become live?
The neutral and ground are essentially shared on the same wire. So the current flowing on neutral wire would easily cause a large voltage difference (up to many volts) on different outlets grounds. The ground potential on any outlet will then depend on the load current, neutral wire resistance and the mains phase it is connected to.
The neutral is effectively shorted to ground implying nasty ground loop problems.
The fat bare wire looks like a 4ga ground electrode conductor. That implies a 200a service and I would expect to see a 2/0 copper or 4/0 aluminum white insulated conductor on that bus.
There isn’t one. It’s turned into a ground wire before it enters the mass head, exactly like the picture I posted in another thread this morning (entitled