Our understanding of electricity, electric potential and what it means is deeply flawed and people have a massive misunderstanding of it.
Albert Einstein once said that ALL things are relative and electricity is no exception.To understand what a volt means we have to look at the relative understanding of temperature to fully get the picture. Temperature is a linear scale, here on Earth we have conveniently set our temperature gauges so that we see anything that makes us cold and uncomfortable is set to minus the freezing point of water and anything that makes us feel warm and cosy is set above the freezing point of water. So in essence - as human beings we have set the temperature scale according to something that is relative to us - water.
The Universe doesn't see temperature in quite the same way we do, in reality there are temperatures that go out to billions of degrees either way from the freezing point of water  but the Universe doesn't see water as that neutral point, in fact it doesn't see a neutral point at all, it is only us that do that because water is relevant to our lives. So in reality temperature is just a linear scale that goes in either direction from water but is infinite in either direction.
Voltage is exactly the same. Here on Earth we see anything above the ground potential of Earth as volts, we see the Earth as zero volts just like we see water as zero temperature and everything above zero volts is measurable on our gauges as positive. The Universe doesn't quite see it the way we do, we think there is no minus volts or sub volts and that the Earth is Absolute zero in volts terms. That is not the case, the Earth is somewhere in the middle where volts are concerned.
To explain this in simple terms:- if you placed a wire on the moon and lead it out into space and then placed a wire on Earth and lead it out to space then measured the voltage on a giant multimeter, the Earth would have a positive voltage based on its potential energy compared with the Moon. If you did the same with Saturn and the Earth then Saturn would have positive volts compared with the Earth which would become ground just like the Moon was to Earth. This is what voltage phasing is in a generator. Remember the old saying about birds sat on a 44kv high voltage wire asking 'where is all this voltage they are talking about'? The bird will only find out when it touches the ground wire and electrocutes itself. We as humans can only be electrocuted by our own planet if we reached out and touched another potential such as the Moon or saturn - just like the birds.
So this planet has potential but you will never see it until you reach out and touch something that is different in either plus ot minus voltage....or potential energy.
All the circuits you use are already loaded with Earth's potential energy and all you have to do is reach out and touch something else with a greater or lesser potential and the circuit will come alive. They don't teach you that at school. Think about it!

Trust me, I have been thinking a lot about things lately.  And one of the better places to start is here:

https://www.youtube.com/user/kathodosdotcom/videos

The first things to understand are fields, space, counter-space and dielectricity.

Very good analysis of potential nav, I have often thought about earths potential in this way. I think Tesla knew this oh so well. My thought is that below the earths crust is a negative potential and above is positive.

Quote from Jeff Nading on August 11th, 2014, 08:28 PM

Very good analysis of potential nav, I have often thought about earths potential in this way. I think Tesla knew this oh so well. My thought is that below the earths crust is a negative potential and above is positive.

I used to think along similar lines but now I think the Earth can also be positive as well as negative. The mistake we made which was quite a natural one to do is to assume we are at a neutral standpoint as far as energy is concerned. We invented volt and amp meters and we set the meter to zero and we believe what the meters tell us. What we never thought about was that we could be somewhere along a linear scale of potential electrical energy that is infinite in either direction. Because of this we only see energy as being plus voltages on a meter. The idea of sub voltages or voltages that are below zero on our multimeters never occured to us so we will never be able to see them. The fact is though, if we have a potential voltage sat around us all the time which we think is neutral and zero volts because the meters we invented say so, then we can never see sub potentials that can interact with our own potential. We set our meters selfishly to zero which would in essence be like setting our temperature gauges so that we cannot read sub zero temperatures.

nav, another way to look at it according to Ken Wheeler is that we simply have charge and discharge.  He emphatically states there is no such thing as positive and negative charge.  What you have between charging and discharging are gradients.  These fields act just like pressure gradients and will align themselves naturally in the most stable manner they can.  If you go further with Ken's research/theory, you may ask yourself where does charge come from and where does discharge go to.  According to him, that would be the Ether containing what he terms dielectricity.

Space as we know it is a bit of a mind screw.  If you say something is turning counter clockwise, I can go around the other side and say it is turning clockwise.  The simple fact is that it is rotating/spinning.  Nature doesn't operate the way we perceive it.  It is much more simplex.  The math to describe it can be very complex because of our adherence to terms like space and time.

I personally have found Ken's work rather fascinating because he describes nature from nature's perspective instead of our human perspective.  Using his terminology, if you put yourself as the Ether, you see what options/modalities you have available to you.  You see the cyclic systems and gradients you can create and begin to understand what is actually possible.  Before you know it, you start to recognize what the Ether can do and what that might look like from the outside looking in.  The biggest surprise in going through this exercise is noticing the things you can do playing the role of the Ether that you cannot perceive or detect when you take the role of the typical human researcher.

Anyway, not to beat a dead horse, I would welcome your thoughts.

Potential energy is energy that is stored within a system. It exists when there is a force that tends to pull an object back towards some lower energy position. This force is often called a restoring force. For example, when a spring is stretched to the left, it exerts a force to the right so as to return to its original, unstretched position. Similarly, when a mass is lifted up, the force of gravity will act so as to bring it back down. The initial action of stretching the spring or lifting the mass both require energy to perform. The energy that went into lifting up the mass is stored in its position in the gravitational field, while similarly, the energy it took to stretch the spring is stored in the metal. According to the law of conservation of energy, energy cannot be created or destroyed; hence this energy cannot disappear. Instead, it is stored as potential energy. If the spring is released or the mass is dropped, this stored energy will be converted into kinetic energy by the restoring force, which is elasticity in the case of the spring, and gravity in the case of the mass. Think of a roller coaster. When the coaster climbs a hill it has potential energy. At the very top of the hill is its maximum potential energy. When the car speeds down the hill potential energy turns into kinetic. Kinetic energy is greatest at the bottom.

http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-potential-what-high-potential-low-potential-174677

the earth is a sponge. it draws in energy of its surroundings. it must have a equal potential in the space it is in.

the potential of the sun is greatest. we may look at the unit joules to find how much energy is absorbed by earth..
i say this because if i use a ground, the electrical energy that goes in, has no restoring force, 6 foot conductors have a high restoring force,
 :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6m01VGiNPI#ws


the energy that will cause a smaller radius object to have the higher surface charge, charge is on the surface.   so we have a positive potential.

my tiny spark goes directly in the earth. nothing happened. the fine wire is a source of equal potential. all electric really is, is a potential of the surface charge density of the mass of the sun, and all charges that are surrounding it.on the wire.