1) Significant shock current (more than a fraction of a mA ) only flows when you grab both L and N. Grab just L and a small displacement current flows from your capacitance to free space, but even a fairly corpulant body , that will be hundreds of pF, so nary a tingle, at 50Hz enough to light a neon screwdriver or operate a no-touch voltage sensor, but not enough to do you damage or to trip an RCD. Only once there are two metallic (or perhaps ionic liquid) contacts does a possibly dangerous current flow.
You might get there with capacitance only if you are lying on the thin ground sheet, spread eagled, but it would be a push.
So for the L-N shock both currents start together (or within c/d of each other, where c is the speed of light and d is the path length difference - for any RCD or MCB, that is the same "instant").
point 2)
All ADS mechanisms work for faults of negligible impedance - the humble 13A fuse will do the task of disconnection the face of any fault loop resistance lower than a few ohms.
You may need some EEB to provide part of that path, or maybe the CPC (the green wire in the mains lead usually) is enough, depending where exactly that fault is.
The clever part is ADS for faults of non-negligible impedance, such the few k ohms of the human body, and to still detect that sort of impedance L-E when tens of amps are flowing L-N. - enter the RCD.
1) Significant shock current (more than a fraction of a mA ) only flows when you grab both L and N. Grab just L and a small displacement current flows from your capacitance to free space, but even a fairly corpulant body , that will be hundreds of pF, so nary a tingle, at 50Hz enough to light a neon screwdriver or operate a no-touch voltage sensor, but not enough to do you damage or to trip an RCD. Only once there are two metallic (or perhaps ionic liquid) contacts does a possibly dangerous current flow.
You might get there with capacitance only if you are lying on the thin ground sheet, spread eagled, but it would be a push.
So for the L-N shock both currents start together (or within c/d of each other, where c is the speed of light and d is the path length difference - for any RCD or MCB, that is the same "instant").
point 2)
All ADS mechanisms work for faults of negligible impedance - the humble 13A fuse will do the task of disconnection the face of any fault loop resistance lower than a few ohms.
You may need some EEB to provide part of that path, or maybe the CPC (the green wire in the mains lead usually) is enough, depending where exactly that fault is.
The clever part is ADS for faults of non-negligible impedance, such the few k ohms of the human body, and to still detect that sort of impedance L-E when tens of amps are flowing L-N. - enter the RCD.
