Backfeed generator through dryer outlet?

According to the OSHA rules of Ontario. Massive mistakes were made and management would be held responsible and probably jailed for lying about the state of the lines in each case.

The generator hookup people would have their pee-pees slapped but no where near the foreman and the upper people for the deaths.

Now one was in Peurto Rico and there are so many more waiting for jobs that one isn't gonna' be noticed.

Wire a tranfer switch box in with 4 or 6 circuits you want to be backed up and a proper plug on the damn thing. Don't play with people's safety or your own. Your unit coming becoming energized may not be fun either unless you have money to burn.

The meter base does not isolate the neutral. Unless you have a fault > > Toller wrote:

OK, I suppose that could be possible, but would not put out a heck of a lot. Good grounding should exist anyhow, but I get your point. This would only affect those on the same transformer, I would think.

"Jim & Lil" wrote: ... One thing that was constructive in my replies is that even

Most transfer switches do not switch the neutral wire anyway. However, if your generator and your panel is properly grounded, it should be almost impossible to energize the neutral enough to do harm, even without a real transfer switch.

Having said that, obviously, a transfer switch is the only way to go. Backfeeding an outlet is dangerous and violates the NEC.

I think unless you have some sort of huge generator the load presented by the outside world will look to the generator as pretty much a short to ground. It would really have to be a situation where the power outage resulted in you and your immediate neighbors being islanded. Where I live there are 10 houses on the same pole transformer and even if that were isolated I doubt my 4.4 kW machine could pull that load. Maybe if it were the middle of the night and everyone's fridge just happened to finish cycling before the power went out and and and... I think the risk is nearly zip. But for safety to your machine more so than risk to any lineman it might not be a bad idea to attach a reminder sign to your double male cable or adaptor or whatever you do this with: TURN OFF MAIN BREAKER BEFORE USING

According to :

Of course. 4 wire 240V is 4 wire 240V, and breakers don't care which terminals are the innie and which are the outie ;-)

We were installing a new main panel, and just when we wanted to transfer the feed, the local power company went on strike. Out of necessity (because so much had been transferred to the new panel), we ended up temporarily backfeeding the new main panel thru its dryer circuit from the old main's dryer circuit. [The new main didn't have a meter installed nor the main feed of course.]

During the great ice storm, a friend and I helped a muncipality out by doing inspections of generator installations. One of them (installed by a professional electrician) wired the generator directly into the panel's backplane (they were lucky, they just got their power back, and all we did was remove the backfeed and reestablish the real feed). The main breaker was wired open.

During the same ice storm, we spliced a 100Kw generator directly into a main panel (after physically disconnecting the line feed). [This was at the municipal works garage, and became a base for emergency crews, road clearance, and included the army's food/fuel distribution center.]

In an emergency, you gotta do what you gotta do. However, if you do have to do this, you have to do whatever you can to make it safe (ie: wire or padlock or physically disconnect the main). Secondly, if you are preparing for an emergency _before_ the emergency takes place, do it right. Installing outlets and obtaining a suicide cord is not right.

According to Steve Kraus :

Precisely.

A friend of a friend suicide-corded his generator into his house, and the generator promptly smoked within seconds of firing up.

He forgot the main breaker.

Bzzzzt, wrong answer and asumption, would you like to try for whgat is behind Door #1.......

In your statement above, you make at least ONE very hugh assumtion that is NOT correct. You assume that it takes many seconds, or minuets, of backfeed power to electrocute someone downline. This is patently a FALSE Assumtion. With the Transformers on the poles any amount of power that gets put on the line generates an extremely Highvoltage Spike, upline. It doesn't take, but a few miliseconds, of this spike to fry any grounded entitiy across the HV side of the line. To protect linemen from such spikes, they employ Grounding Straps on BOTH SIDES of the work area, that in theory should protect them from such spikes. If the straps are not installed correctly or if the workers are installing the straps without using HotSticks, then they can certainly be ZAPPED by such spikes, or power backfeed into the system. If you don't believe this is true, just go ask any Lineman, and be prepared to get an earfull....

Me

Your thinking is just plain wrong.....

Me

all that means is you haven't a clue about what just happened, and what was happening down the line.....

Me

There is one very hugh assumption being made here in this thread. It seems that everyone ASSUMES that all the houses that are going to be backfeed, have wiring that is in TOTAL Compliance with the NEC, and that if it was once in compliance, it is still in compliance, many years later. Just what happens when the Ground Rod connection corrodes? When was the last time you checked yours? What about the Neutral/Ground bonding strap? what is the resistance across that today, in your house? Do you even know? Seems like very big assumptions to "Me"....

Me

Oh, gee. Don't get started askign for specifics. Usenet is for wild ass statements completely lackig in truth.

Since you asked, Myrtle Bingle was using her suicide cord in a power cut in Arkansas in 1956. She neglected to turn off the mains, and killed David Petersen, who was working on the line outside her house.

Myrtle was a darky, and she was promptly arrested and tried. Spent the rest of her life in prison. Died last year.

Remember, now, this is Usenet. You can't believe everything you read.

I was working on a trailer with a friend of mine. He want and "turned off the mains" and then we found a couple sockets hot.

Turns out, he'd turned off the breaker for the dryer, thinking it was the mains. I turned off the rest of the breakers.

How easy it is to make mistakes like that....

How would any lineman know? If they have been "zapped" by this high voltage spike you speak of, they wouldn't be telling you about it usually.

If they are putting grounds on a line with their bare hands it won't take a wild generator to kill them.

Bull. In the last 5 years we have had 3 poweroutages where I used my generator. There wasn't a lineman within 5 miles of me on any of them. My

No, I think I'm on solid ground when I say that a load measuring in many megaWatts, maybe hundreds of megaWatts depending on the area of the power outage that I am downstream of, is essentially the same as shorting the generator output to ground.

I didn't assume anything, I noted the code requirements which mean that there would have to be a significant number of violations/failures for there to be a safety issue past the obvious forgetting to shutoff the main or the suicide cord which I noted as well.

Remember that even if your ground rod is rust, you've still got a ground within a couple utility poles unless it is your actual service drop that is down. It is all but impossible to build any dangerous voltage relative to ground on the neutral. Even forgetting to pull the main has a 99.999% probability of killing any small generator or tripping it's circuit breakers before any dangerous voltage could build on the utility mains.

Additionally the utility crews are supposed to 1. wear their insulating gloves, 2. check lines for voltage before handling, and 3. ground lines before working on them. All of which puts the odds of killing a utility worker with your temporary generator connection worse than the odds of winning Powerball. The chances of killing yourself with the suicide cord on the other hand are much better.

Pete C.

Well it is easy to see that you "Don't think" period. Just what do you think happens when your genset tries to energize a segment of the grid by backfeeding thru the PolePig out on your pole? Does that one or two second pulse before you little gensets goes up in smoke, show up on the primary side of the PolePig? At what voltage does that impluse show up at?. How far does that pulse go, before it dies of IR losses? When you complete your 100 level College Course on Power & Transmission come back and tell us all about it. Untill then, don't spread your intelligence around to deeply cause your not fertilizing any crops.....

Me

They wouldn't have need to tell "Me", as I have been there, and seen that, many times, in one of my previous lives. Have you ever really looked at the Grounding Straps used by the Pro's? Have you ever noticed that they have builtin devices that show if they go "Hot" while connected? Where did the "Bare Hands" come from? All the linemen, I have ever known work with UL Approved Insulated Gloves, and HotSticks, but that doesn't mean they never get zapped or tingled on occasion.

Me

Care to tell me which brand of consumer level generator (~5kw) can sustain a "one or two second" pulse into a megawatt level load? This class of generator does not have a separate exciter to provide field power under short circuit conditions. The field would collapse in milliseconds or less if the generator was hot when it was connected, or if an attempt was made to start the generator while connected, the field would never develop in the first place.

Pete C.