Corrosion of ground electrodes has been looked at recently, and there have been plenty of unhappy surprises. It seems that, in very many ordinary situations, the performance and life of the rods and plates is a lot less than was expected. In some reports, the absolute worst results were from ... big surprise here ... rods made of stainless steel. Oops.
How does this work? do the alloying metals in the SS make it more prone to galvanic action than regular or galvinised steel?
How soon until we need catodic protection systems with sacrificial anodes to go with our ground rods?
Personally, I've always been of the opinion that ground rods don't provide an adaquate path to ground regardless of state of decomposition.
