5 ms·

It's not mentioned, but this is DEADLY for innocent linemen too. They check the line before working and it's dead. They start work and some idiot without a pro

• NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  How often does this actually happen? I would hope that almost anyone using one of these have the sense to turn off their main breaker.
  • Dalewyn 4y ago
    The kind of people this safety advisory is for don't know what a breaker even is.
  • dave78 4y ago
    If not enforced mechanically, it's really easy to forget though. The last time I needed to power my house with a generator, it was because the power went out during a horrendous thunderstorm at 3am. We have a sump pit with a battery-powered backup, but when I checked on it right after the power went out I discovered the backup couldn't keep up with the volume of water coming in (it had been raining for hours already, and we ended up getting over 6" of rain that night). I had less than 10 minutes from being awoken at 3am to having to have the generator up and running to prevent our basement from getting flooded. And of course, we had nothing but flashlights and there was a thunderstorm raging outside (where I obviously needed to set up the generator). It would have been way, way too easy to forget one the many critical steps (and critical order of steps) in that scenario to use a suicide cord safely.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      A battery powered transfer pump may be worthwhile as another backup. Had your generator decided not to start you’d be sunk.
  • bluGill 4y ago
    It doesn't happen very often because odds are you also connected your neighbors and they are drawing enough power to trip one of your breakers. It does happen though, which is why linemen normally short out any wire they think should be dead before working on it. (or they apply working on live wires rules for wires they think are dead)
• Nifty3929 4y ago
  How would they get 14kV, assuming the output from the generator is just 110v? Honest question, I was wondering this before and I assume you know more about it than I do.
  • hajile 4y ago
    Transformers work both ways. From the substation to your nearby transformer, it goes 14.4kV to 240v (ignoring split phases and 3-phase power). When you generate inside your house, it goes the other way and boosts from 240v up to 14.4kV (albeit with fewer total amps than the substation is generating, but enough to kill). The US NEC (national electric code) requires any backup generator to use a transfer switch. The switch has on-off-on positions with one "on" being for main power and the other being for the generator. That "off" position in the middle ensures that you can't physically connect the generator and main power at the same time (preventing this issue entirely). Unfortunately, most people don't know what a transfer switch is or what it does. For people that do know, installation cost is probably an issue as they'll cost a couple thousand dollars to have installed. In my opinion, they should be a requirement on new construction, but I guess people don't want to pay the cost.
    • Nifty3929 4y ago
      Thanks so much for the explanation! That the transformer works both ways makes perfect sense, and I'm a little irritated that I didn't think of that in the first place.
• kwhitefoot 4y ago
  There is no way the kind of portable generator that most ordinary people would buy could energize a transformer that steps up to 14 kV. I suppose it might just be possible for the little pole mounted 50kVA ones that are common in many rural areas of the world but they generally don't step up to 14 kV. Most such transformers would look like a dead short to such piddling little generators