"First Energy, the company that also created that famous NE blackout (NY, Ontario, OH, MI) stopped fixing earth ground to cut costs and increase profits. Therefore people were being shocked in their jacuzzis and swimming pools. " At 120 V the earth is a very poor conductor. At the lowest distribution voltage (7,200 volts) it is decent. It is this leakage from the high voltage primary to the low voltage secondary that needs to returned to the primary side. If the POCO has not tied the center tap of the transformers down to earth the leakage will appear on the secondary on the grounded conductor. It will then attempt to return by any path it can find, including things that are incontact with the earth. The main purpose of earth grounding the already grounded conductor is to provide a path for this leakage. In a correctly installed and operating system that is the purpose. An incorrectly installed and operated system can easily create hazards, but the hazard is from the incorrect installation and operation. The only major blackouts I am aware of in the northeast had far more of the genesis in solar storms creating voltage shifts in the earth itself. This caused ends of long distance transmission lines that were correctly earth tied to have additional DC currents flowing. These additional currents caused saturation in transformer leading to overheating and massive failures. It could even be argued that NOT tying the ends of the transmission lines to earth might have actually prevented the problem. Over long distances especially at higher latitudes the actual earth potential can be rather from from zero if a geomagnetic storm is present causing changes in the earth's magnetic field.

Thanks guys. The system consists of autonomous switch replacements throughout the house which 'listen' for pulses sent along the neutral line. Technology is called UPB and is very common in home automation. Effectively this would be like installing a nightlight replacement in the outlet or something like that. Very low power draw device that does not control any load. Admitted I don't understand the inner workings of the GFCI system. Home is 3 years old and there are probably 12 GFI outlets throughout the kitchen and island area. I just wanted to pull power from one of them, hoping to simply 'jump' or connect the gfci from this outlet as if it were never there. I appreciate the advice and warnings though. I certainly have no desire to make the home unsafe.

and found that it is acceptable to put a 15 amp receptacle on a 20 amp non dedicated circuit. I also checked several existing duplex receptacles on other 20 amp circuits and they are all 15 amps. So now my question is, should I change the gftr to a 20 amp leaving the others at 15 amps or continue to try to connect the ground (#12) to the 15 amp gftr? Lutron tech support recommended 20 amp duplex receptacles if protected by a 20 amp breaker. They also said the ground screw on the 20 amp gftr will back out more allowing connection of the #12. They must very tight specs on the construction of the 15 and 20 amp gftrs.

The real 'trick' is when you design a new piece of equipment, and then have a hand in writing the code governing its use. So that you can mandate that your new equipment MUST be used by everyone everywhere. Although the TR outlets are presented a safety measure for kids, they only protect the range of kids that are dumb enough to think of sticking something in an outlet, but aren't clever or persistent enough to figure out the 'trick' to defeat the TR outlet.