I believe you will find that the problem lies in your household circuit
breaker panel. If the neutral conductor is connected to the ground bus,
which is required by the National Electric Code I believe, it will
cause the GFCI breaker in the generator to trip. In order for a GFCI to
detect a ground fault the neutral conductor on the load side of the
breaker must be independent of the ground conductor. I don't know a
good (safe) way to get around this. I'll have to think about it.
Bill Bowser
Cincinnati
Robert McElwee wrote:
Several times over the past few years I have killed my
main breaker (as well as all the other breakers), hooked up two
extension cords I made that have double male ends on them, and powered
up both sides of my breaker box with a 5K generator. This year
hurricane season is here so I pulled out my "new" generator (a used 6K
generator my father traded me for a 10K generator I bought for him) and
fired it up. It is running fine so I killed my main breaker and all the
other breakers and tried to back feed into the house through the two
electrical outlets I have always used. Here is what I see:
1) As soon as I plug the generator into the house outlet the GFCI on
the generator trips.
2) Plugging two refrigerators into one of my extension cords (without
the double male patch) works fine.
3) Plugging the double male patch into my extension cord and back
feeding a power strip works fine (power from the generator coming into
one of the strip outlets - the male cord on the outlet just laying on
the ground).
Any ideas? It looks like to me that both my generator and extension
cords with double male ends are working fine. I've tried to plug into a
house outlet (all breakers still off) in several different rooms and it
trips the GFCI every time. I am confused since this is something I have
done many times before with another generator.
--
Robert McElwee and Blue Flash
"The 50 MPG Miata"
www.lightweightmiata.com/mpg
Lightweight Miata Forum:
www.lightweightmiata.com/forum
The Miata Trailer Project:
www.lightweightmiata.com/trailer
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