On 3/7/2016 14:36, Jan Steinman via EV wrote:
Y’mean like the cord and plug I wired to go into the dryer outlet… with a 15 kW
generator on the other end? :-)
I am careful to follow a certain sequence that begins with throwing the main
breaker and genset breaker, then plugging the plug into the dryer outlet and
the genset BEFORE turning on the genset breaker.
That does make it hard to know when the power comes back on, though. Gotta keep
an eye on the neighbour’s lights. I’ve thought about sticking a little NE-2
bulb or Sonalert on the utility side of the main breaker, but haven’t worked up
the nerve yet.
That is almost guaranteed to be illegal and HIGHLY dangerous. Your
electric utility would scream bloody murder over that arrangement
because there is no positive transfer that prevents any possibility of
your generator feeding back towards the utility. If you happen to miss
in your procedure, have a breaker that fails to open when the operating
level is thrown (I personally have had a couple of those - one being a
main), or someone bumps the wrong breaker, you kill people - notably
utility workers who are working on a de-energized line (or at least they
have every reason to believe so). Or worse, some citizen who does
something stupid with what they though was a de-energized line that was
laying on the ground before emergency services or the electric utility
arrives. Remember that it's not just 120/240 volts that we're talking
about, but whatever primary distribution your neighborhood uses once
your power goes through the transformer that feeds your house and tries
to light up the line.
You MUST have a transfer switch that transfers your house load from the
utility to your generator. Depending on you to follow a procedure to
switch breakers in the right order is not safe, and illegal.
As a long time electric utility worker and the son of an electric
utility worker (although neither of us worked in that side of the
utilities), please do not wire up your generator in any way that does
not include a positive transfer switch that prevents ANY possibility of
energizing the utility service from your generator.
BTW, positive transfer does not have to be anything fancy. For example
a few days ago I had a scheduled 10 hour outage at my house. My
"transfer" was to unplug the input cords to the two UPSes from the wall
and plug them into the generator. Same thing with the air and water
pumps for the six aquariums. Of course that did not pick up the rest of
the house...
--
73
-------------------------------------
Jim Walls - K6CCC
[email protected]
Ofc: 818-548-4804
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/k6ccc/
AMSAT Member 32537 - WSWSS Member 395
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