Neutral Questions

A properly connected neutral is nominally zero volts but the drop in the wire will elevate that a little. The FPN in the NEC says that should be less than 5% but at 277 you could see ~13 volts. If you were grounded and caught 13v on soft tissue it would wake you up. You really get bit when you open it and you see the full line voltage.through the load.

Well, the terminology you use is a bit off. In this case, I don't think it hinders understanding - but some day it will, for sure. Neutrals don't have a load, per se, the way you seem to mean it. The neutral is not allowed to be switched, so with hardwired lights and appliances, the neutral is always connected to a load.

I think what you are really talking about is whether or not current is flowing on the neutral, not whether or not the neutral "has a load".

Again, I'll translate this to the question "is there current flowing on the neutral or not?". The safest way to determine that is to use an amprobe. Perhaps there is a high quality hall effect ticker available - I don't know - but my Greenlee ticker sometimes fails to detect while my amprobe never does. There are other means that involve disconnecting the neutral, but that can get you "bit".

No, that's not the reason. The neutral wire has the same inductance as the hot and the ground, assuming all three wires are the same size and length. However, the neutral is connected to ground, while the hot is not, so that makes a difference.

Inductance in that case would be irrelevant - it would have a negligible affect on the voltage and current in the circuit.

If there is no current flowing in the neutral, it would be at 0 volts with respect to ground, and

That may be ok - but the trouble is that the picture is incomplete. You need more pieces of the "jig saw puzzle" to make the picture meaningful.

I'll take a stab at what might hit the target. 277 volts is often associated with inductive loads like fluorescent lights - that may be the association you mention.

Inductive loads can create a voltage "kick" when they are disconnected. The voltage "kick" can be many times greater than the supply voltage.

So - when one disconnects a current carrying wire from an inductive load - such as fluorescent lights - a voltage much higher than the supply can be generated. If that voltage goes through you, you'll get a nasty jolt.

If the 277 neutral is grounded at the transformer you won't get shocked unless you break open a connection. If you open up a 277 neutral connection and touch the wire going to the load, you will effectively be providing a path from the 277 circuit hot, through the load(s), through your body, to ground. The shock can be pretty bad - especially if your body resistance is low (sweating) and the circuit contains lighting ballasts.

Tick tracers are capacitive coupled voltage sensors. They work as a series-connected, capacitive-coupled circuit using your body as the capacitively coupled path to ground. Notice the fact that they do use ground as the voltage reference so measuring a grounded neutral conductor won't produce any measurement ticks..

Perion