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[KDR]

Brian is correct Dan. The white wire is the neutral.

Coming into your house are 2 black wires twisted around a bare stranded wire. (most cases). The 2 black insulated wires are the hot leads, each a leg of the 220 VAC and the bare is the neutral. On the power company's side of things that Neutral is grounded by a solid wire coming down the side of the pole the transformer is mounted on. At your house a couple of things happen depending on local code.

The wires coming out of the weatherhead now have to be sized all the same size, insulated and one of them, generally the center one has to be marked as neutral, most the time with white electrical tape. Those wires run down to the meter box and connected to special lugs that the meter plugs into. Again the neutral has to be marked. From there the 3 main leads run to your breaker box and the neutral should still be marked in the breaker box. One black lead goes to one side of your main breaker the other black lead to the other terminal on the main breaker. Inside the main breaker box are 2 sets of terminal strips. One of them is insulated from the body of the breaker box. This one is the neutral wire connecting strip where the main wire marked with the white tape goes along with all the other white neutral wires from your romex wiring. The other terminal strip is for grounds. Your bare wires connect to it. Now here is where it may get tricky, depending on application and code. The Neutral strip might need to be bonded to the breaker box. This means there will be a jumper from the neutral terminal strip to a screw connection on the metal breaker box itself. Also some code requires that the meter box be bonded which means that from the line side of the meter box a ground has to be run from the neutral wire to earth ground stake 8' long min (not the same as your ground wire from inside your breaker box). If you have a well for water then depending on where it is located you may be required to bond the neutral to the well casing as well.

The neutral wire is only there to carry the unbalanced load of the circuit. If all is balanced correctly the 2 black hot leads carry the current and the neutral carries nothing. This is why for years the neutral wire could be smaller then the other 2 load wires. No so any more per national code. On each leg of the 220 is 110 volts to the neutral. All outlets have a hot (black, sometimes red) and a white neutral wire. The bare copper or sometimes green is the ground.

Hope this helps you understand it better Dan. Any questions feel free to ask.

[Brian H]

Well I had to pass this to you KDR. I have a friend who lost the Neutral from the pole. As the loads where not balanced. 1/2 the home was very low in voltage and the other high. Light bulbs and such popped; TV bloomed to twice the size screen; so fast; a dash to the main breaker box didn't help.

[dave w]

Radioman

I have a bunch of hacked (wired in) Appliance modules. Use a couple for fans just as you are asking about. I have found it beneficial to leave the NEUTRAL contact (Dan, are you listening?)  on the female (receptacle) end attached to the PC board as it helps to keep the bottom of PC board anchored in the module housing. I use 16 ga stranded wire in red, white, and black colored insulation, so I will know what wire is doing what, a year after the installation. Unsolder the HOT and NEUTRAL input pins (these pins are not only soldered, but also staked to the PC board)  and you now have some space to create an exit hole in the top of the module for Hot, Neutral and Switched wires. I also have a couple of drape motor applications where I took the wires out the center of the back of the module (in order to mount the module flush to the drape motor, without wires exposed) but that is more difficult to configure. A good temperature controlled soldering iron, Dremel tool, and Xacto knife make the mod easier. Anyone handled "Radioman" shouldn't have a problem.