An EVSE will pass a small current from ground to hot to verify the bond. Has nothing to do with earth reference. IMO hard bonding a generator or power station that's only connected to a few things is more dangerous than leaving it floating. My 2 -resistor trick will float the ground reference between the the two 120 legs, but not pass any dangerous current should something go wrong. The EVSE's ground fault detection will still also work.
Yes "code" says all generators should be bonded and grounded, but who ever grounds a generator or power station they use remotely, such as camping? There have been people killed at the Burningman festival because of ground leakage when the alkali dust gets wet (it becomes a low resistance electrolyte). I'll also point out that code doesn't apply to generators not connected to a building just used for portable applications. Isolated ground for a portable application would require 2 faults to create any danger, and bonding without a proper ground rod (which nobody is going to do in this application) makes it more dangerous by "pre-creating" the fault on one side! On Sun, Feb 15, 2026 at 10:01 PM DOOLEY PHILIP G JR via EV < [email protected]> wrote: > Generator neutral should be tied to generator case and a ground rod > unless tied to a service entrance panel where they are tied together. > Consult the current NEC for more details. > Phil > > On Sunday, February 15, 2026 at 10:31:40 PM EST, Jay Summet via EV < > [email protected]> wrote: > > Out of curiosity, how does the ground detection circuit work (and how > doe the 100k resistors trick it?) > > [Also, if you instead drove a grounding rod into the ground and > connected it to the ground pin on your plug, would that work as well to > actually provide a ground? Or would neutral have to be involved?] > > Jay > > On 2/14/26 16:50, (-Phil-) via EV wrote: > > Yes, most all EVSEs have a ground check safety feature. To bypass this > > temporarily: > > Take a screw-on plug (NEMA 5-15P) and install two 1 watt 100k ohm > > resistors. One from neutral (silver screw) to ground (green), and the > other > > from hot (gold screw) to ground (green). Then simply plug this into one > > outlet on the generator/power station, and your EVSE into the other. This > > will safely pass the ground detect on the EVSE, while not being a hazard > in > > any other way. You definitely don't want a "hard bond" to one side > > without a proper ground rod. > > > _______________________________________________ > Address messages to [email protected] > No other addresses in TO and CC fields > HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/ > > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20260216/f619f51c/attachment.htm > > > _______________________________________________ > Address messages to [email protected] > No other addresses in TO and CC fields > HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/ > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20260215/e2e32447/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ Address messages to [email protected] No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
