Forum Discussion
Power failures
I've been reading here about a some peoples problems with power failures, so I thought I'd post the method I used during the many power failures I had before I got a whole house generator. I ...
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.
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.
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.
If you are going to hook a generator up to your home, then do it right. It's against every single code in the book to do what you have described, it's also very dangerous. There is a reason that there are special disconnects that are REQUIRED by NEC, local codes, and individual utility companies now for when someone feeds a home with a generator through a main or sub panel. Too many people forget what order to flip the breakers and it can cause serious injury to linemen if someone forgets to kill the main, it has happened more than once.
C0RR0SIVE wrote:If you are going to hook a generator up to your home, then do it right. It's against every single code in the book to do what you have described, it's also very dangerous.................
There are probably not enough jail cells in the world to hold all of the people who hook up home generators by far more dangerous methods than the one I described.
"Too many people forget what order to flip the breakers and it can cause serious injury to linemen if someone forgets to kill the main, it has happened more than once."
Well, I'll take your word for that, although I have about 20 years of experience as an industrial electrician and another 16 years working in industry, and I don't recall ever hearing of such an occurrence. BTW we used to get a monthly newsletter from some government agency listing all of the accidental deaths for that month, including both industrial and residential.
The most popular way to get killed in industry, seemed to be knocking the pins out of an improperly blocked crane boom. If I remember correctly, most residential electrocutions were caused by an improperly grounded appliance of some kind, electric drills being the favorite.
