Looks like Florida will not be getting the hurricane this time around. Should turn north and pass us, just some wind here on the west coast.
The other day though, I did fire up my generator and got out my LED emergency lights. Well, the one that I knew where it was. The other was tucked away so I went to get it and could not find it. Easy thing to do was order one from Amazon for delivery in two days. Of course, I got the email saying it was shipped and a half hour later I found the missing one. Now I have three. I image one will end up next door at my son's house.
Anyway, if you have outages, the LED lights are great. Output is 540 lumen on high The new one takes 3 "D" cells and depending on brightness will last from 30 to 285 hours. Much safer than the old kerosene lamps. too.
I just use AA and AAA LED flashlights and penlights. They're all over the place. BTW, though we don't get hurricanes here, we do get rare power outages. And if the power goes out during a heavy rain, my basement WILL flood. I got about 18" water in the basement when that happened. My wife and MIL painted the basement recently and spruced it up, making it pleasant. So I broke down and bought a generator. Couldn't help it.
My wooded area has power outages all the time. Must have been 15 years ago when I had a transfer panel put in and bought a generator. Today's systems can handle the whole house apparently managing the system so you can use everything judiciously. Mine handles only essentials like refrigerator, freezer, well and furnace and small appliances and lights. In Florida, for us old folks, AC would be important.
It pretty much washed out the International Plowing Match in Bridgepoert Ontario. I was 2, and still remember coming home to the farm and being worried about my pet bunny being blown away - the hutch was under a tree beside the lane in front of the house.
Going to use extension cords. Main concern it the refrigerator if it goes out for some time. Past history in this area is good but if it turns out otherwise I'll do something with the panel
We have city water and natural gas so that makes life a bit easier. The generator is an inverter type, 1700W running and is pretty quiet. Two
110 outlets, as 12V outlet and a USB port. My Wi-Fi is on a UPS so I can charge that up and have internet for a fairly long time.
After helping a friend get his temporarily wired into his house during a recent outage he had, I got curious about how you're supposed to do this to code. And boy, is there a lot of confusion, potential problems and real problems. It all centers around the neutral and ground. According to code, the neutral at the generator should not be connected to the frame. Yet with most portable generators it is. A few generator manufacturers have instructions on how to unbond it, but most don't. Additionally, some generators have all the receptacles GFCI protected now, while others the 30A 240V one isn't. If you buy one that has it GFCI protected and it has the neutral bonded to the frame, it will trip as soon as you connect it to the house, assuming you use a std
4 conductor cord. And if you un-bond the neutral at the generator, then it's no longer compliant with OSHA rules for portable use with extension cords. It's really quite amazing. And no generator has a switch so you can change it on the fly, probably because they figure people will not do it correctly, so most configure them for portable use only. If you leave it bonded and again use a std 4 conductor extension cord to go to the panel, then the ground and neutral are parallel, with the ground carrying some of the neutral current.
I guess the good news is that while there are some theoretical safety issues and hazards a lot of people are just buying whatever generator and connecting them and I haven't seen any reports of any deaths, shocks, etc. I did see reports of people having trouble because theirs had all the receptacles GFCI protected and it instantly tripped.
So in an odd way it was worth the investment. It is a nice setup if you have the outages. Where I lived in the past they were minimal. In extreme weather, hot or cold, it would be nice to just keep going comfortably.
This all gets to whether your transfer equipment switches the neutral. (SDS vs non SDS) It is scary how many licensed electricians don't really understand that. If you are not using a GFCI equipped generator, not unbonding the neutral for a non SDS (neutral NOT switched) is not particularly dangerous but it is a 250.6 violation.
I still have a problem understanding how having the neutral bonded in a portable generator makes anything safer unless you also ground the generator (making it NOT portable). Of course you can always do this ;-)
The advantage I can see to having the neutral bonded on a portable generator is that it will allow the GFCIs to work. Without the neutral being bonded, all the ground wires in the plugged in cords would do is tie the frame to the eqpt grounds on tools, etc. Suppose a hot starts shorting to ground. That current has no return path to the generator windings, so no current will flow, the GFCI will not see anything wrong. With it bonded, that short current, as soon as it's 6ma, will trip the GFCI.
Seems to me if you had to have it one way or the other permanently and want to use the generator for both portable and to power a house, you're better off having it bonded. Then if you use a std 4 conductor cord, you wind up with current flowing in both the neutral and the ground, which isn't kosher, but doesn't seem particularly dangerous. Then you have to analyze all the possible faults and their likelihood. With any of these you can come up with scenarios where doing A makes fault B less dangerous, but it then makes fault C possible. Like I said, a lot of people are doing whatever, ignorant of any of this and I don't see bad things happening. Worst is that some people have bought generators with GFCI on the whole thing and it instantly trips. There I guess the non-compliant kludge is to just run a three wire cord to the house. But then you have an alternate neutral current path being through the earth ground at the house, through earth, through you while you're touching the generator, assuming the generator has the neutral bonded.
You'd think between the generator manufacturers and the code folks they would address this, come up with a reasonable solution, since a lot of people are doing this. But seems there is no interest. I guess the reasonable solution is to put in a transfer switch that switches the neutral and then you can use a bonded generator.
That is a small generator just capable of handling a refrigerator or freezer starting wattage. It would not handle central AC and barely a portable AC. What you have is what a camper might have. You are lucky to have natural gas and water but these could go out in severe circumstances.
I almos tmade the mistake of getting a 'camper generator' that only had the 120 v outlets.
I found one on sale that is about 3500 watts depending on propane or gasoline. Only about $ 350 delivered to the house. Interisting thing about this one is that it has a switch that will let me parallel the 120 volt lines so if I had a camper on 120 volts I could get the full output of both sides of the line.
I have a 5 kw unit that is gas only but most of the times around here the power is only out for a few hours or less. Though the propane would be the way to go for the short times as it does not contain anything like the ethanol gas that screws up the carborator if you leave the gas in it.
While it violates about a dozen codes I installed a sperate breaker and ran it to a receptical outside the house near where my 5 kw unit is in a 'dog house'. Just use a 'doubel sucide' cord to connect it to the house. Also gives me 2 of the 120 volt outlets with high current if I ever want them.
Would not subjust this to most, but I have worked with all kinds of electrical power for many years and know how to handle it safely and have a written check list as what to do to put it on line.
We're lucky here , there are at least 3 local stations that sell non ethanol regular gas - and more that sell only premium non-ethanol . Our bikes and all small engines get the non ethanol gas only , I've seen what ethanol can do to a carburetor if left for long periods of time - and stabilizer doesn't help much .
If the generator is not grounded, where is that fault path?
If this is a skid frame, there might be some incidental contact with earth but if it is on tires, there is no path from earth to the generator neutral or ECC. It is debatable that even the incidental connection of the frame sitting on grass or concrete would trip a GFCI.
The only issue is "objectionable current on grounding conductors". You will see some voltage drop (actually rise) on the EGC. Since the grounding electrode is still connected on the house end that is really academic for safety in the house. In reality this is probably no more dangerous than the 3 wire dryer cord but they did away with that in 96 too.
The code deals with fixed mount generators and portable generators but there are different rules. If you really wanted to be compliant you would need to lift the bond in the generator whenever you connected it to the house unless the transfer equipment switched the neutral. Legally any connected generator would also require a grounding electrode if it was an SDS, (switched neutral) because the generator becomes a virtual utility connection. The grounding electrode needs to connect where the bonding jumper lands.
I'll find out if my 50 amp plug box and the panel interlock kit passes inspection on Tuesday. The electrical contractor did the permit paperwork without seeing the generator. The electrician never mentioned grounding the generator. It's SDS. We tested it after the install, and it seemed to work.
I don't have any problem with ethanol in the gas. My snow thrower was another matter and needed repair after storing it with stabilized ethanol containing gas. New equipment should be fine and built with seals that are not attacked by ethanol which changes the solvent nature of gasoline.
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