Power failures

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BirdDog wrote:

To clarify, I wasn't referring to "doing it" as posting it here getting into trouble, I was meaning actually connecting a portable generator in such a way. Kinda doubt posting the steps here will bring civil action by the power company. Again, just something I personally wouldn't share as backfeeding is already widely addressed on the Internet and so are the laws.

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  Sorry, I misunderstood the whole point of your reply.  Just about everyone here in Florida  has a generator of some kind, many of them are hardwired to their house wiring by some method during an outage.  The utility companies are well aware of this situation. 

  Some years ago when I lived in south Florida, my service entrance was severed by a falling tree limb.  When the utility company came to hook it back up I noticed that the guy doing the work was wearing hot gloves even though the line was dead, and he was working out of a bucket truck.  When I asked him about this, he said that with all of the generators around possibly backfeeding from every which way, wearing hot gloves was SOP.

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GabeU wrote:

gaines_wright 

 

The only caveat I would add is that, if someone is going to do this, they install, or have installed, an interlock switch.  Though remembering to turn off the main is something that has to be done, people forget things, and accidentally powering the generator while the main is still on could cause considerably injury to a linesman or someone else working on the mains. 

  Like I said to birdog, the utility companies are well aware of all the generators around, and take precautions.

  I think the most likely occurrence would be that your running generator would try to pick up all the loads between you and the fault on the line. If the generator was down and the power came back on with the main and dryer breakers closed, the utility power would try to motorise your generator. Neither situation would be good for the generator even though a breaker would probably trip somewhere.

 My dryer receptacle was actually located in a detached pole barn about 70 feet from the house with a hundred amp service feeding a separate panel from the main house.  Installing any sort of interlock would have been tricky to say the least.

  Well like I said, I don't have to worry about it any more.

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alfresco wrote:

My nieghbor, who's a retired electrician has an extension cord hooked up to a sub panel in his garage looks a little hokey but I guess it works.

  I did the same thing, until a friend of mine suggested that I hook a dryer receptacle to the subpanel out in the pole barn where the generator was located.  I didn't have enough spare breakers to leave the generator hooked up all of the time, and I didn't like the idea of the generator being connected with the flick of a switch anyway, IMO the dryer receptacle made everything a lot easier and safer.

  Waist deep snow?  Our problem has been the heat.  We just had over a week of near or over 90 degree temperatures.  In the middle of February!