Flexible cable for generator backfeed use?

[Richard]

If you never screw up, they'll be fine. Their life is in your hands.
Don't screw up.


If you installed a UL listed transfer switch, then you'd be 100% safe.
As it is, you're less than 100% safe. Actually, _you_ are 100% safe,
it's the other person who pays if you blow it.

I stand by my statement that (a) it's a valid concern, and (b) this
isn't a flame.

Re-read my very last sentence. You seem to have a comprehension problem.

 

[Me]

I am sure this is one of those city 'legends' we have all heard about.
I suspect the real reason is that the utilities don't want uncontrolled
generators on the grid even when it is operational. As far as
electrocuting utility workers, there would be such a hugh load (the
entire grid) on your generator when it was supplying power to an
otherwise unpowered grid, it will see that load as a dead short circuit
and trip its own circuit breakers. It sure as he... won't be able to
electrocute anybody, but you will burn your generator up if it's circuit
breakers don't function very quickly.

Your Statement is nothing more than a "Load of Crap".... It is obvious
that you have never worked in Electrical Power and Distribution. Yes,
the small genset will blow it's breakers, when trying to feed an
"Infinite Looking Load", BUT the Power Transiant that that little genset
can send down the line, who's voltage is builtup at each transformer it
passes thru, can and will zap anyone handling the distribution system
between that small genset and the first open Distribution Switch. Yes,
all linemen will have Safety Shorting Straps across at both ends of
section that is under repair, BUT the Instantainious Transiant still
can, and sometime does "Ring" thru a Safety Shorting Strap. That's why
HotSticks were invented...after these types of accidents were
encountered. It isn't his genset that anyone really cares about, it is
the safety of those guys out on the "Line", trying to restore power to
the hundreds and thousands of customers, who don't have little gensets
in the gardge.


Me been there, done that, been zapped, and live to
tell about it....

 

[Me]

In our world, in N. America, the guy was challenging death throughj
ignorance and would be expected sometime in his career to die on the job,
with that attitude.

Linemen would never work on an isolated line without treating it as alive.
This would not be performed. Period!

"Deenergized" or "dead" means "grounded" or at the same potential as his
feet, hands, and the rest of his body. Portable / hand grounds would have
been applied on each side of his work zone, on the conductor where they are
visible at all times. If he was caught doing otherwise he could be charged
with violating safe working practices and this may result in his having a
criminal record for the rest of his life. The foreman, supervisor and
manager would all be charged as well and somebody would likely spend time in
prison for it as well as 100,000s dollars in personal and company fines.

The point is completely moot (if there was one) You may as well tell us
about the children playing on the edge of the cliff and one falling off.

No....the point is... that First, The genset shouldn't have been there
running, in the first place.....Second, the Supervisor should have
insisted that Safety Shorting Straps be placed at both ends of the
system, before any Relocation take place....and Third, the Lineman
should have refused to mess with the wires untill the Safety shorting
Straps were in place.

Had the Lineman istalled the Safety Shorting Straps as he was supposed
to, he would have seen the sparks fly and the whole crew would have gone
looking for the IDIOT, running the genset, and punched his lights
out........


Me been there, done that. been zapped, and lived
to tell the story...

 

[Derek Broughton]

Please explain to me how I can zap a utility worker with the main
disconnected....

Bottom line is: What I'm doing is 100% legal and safe. End of discussion
on this "issue".

LOL. You can't end a discussion that way on usenet. "Bottom Line", unless
I missed a post somewhere, is that it's only safe because _your_ procedures
make it so. There doesn't appear to be any switch in the system that makes
it _only_ possible for your generator to feed the house when the house is
off the grid. As far as your utility is concerned, that isn't safe enough.
How do you guarantee that nobody else connects your generator to the house?

I had _no_ intention of writing any flames over this, until you demonstrated
that you don't seem to understand the safety issue.

 

[Derek Broughton]

I am sure this is one of those city 'legends' we have all heard about.

It really depends on your definition of electrocution After the ice
storm that hit Ontario & Quebec a few years back, a number of linemen were
supposedly "shocked" by "dead" lines, because they were working in farming
areas where practically every barn had an improperly installed generator.
afaik, nobody was ever hurt, let alone electrocuted. Presumably if they'd
been working right in the vicinity of said barn, they could have been
electrocuted, but that would have meant they had to ignore all proper
procedure _and_ the fact that they could see lights and hear a generator!

I suspect the real reason is that the utilities don't want uncontrolled
generators on the grid even when it is operational.

Methinks so too.

As far as
electrocuting utility workers, there would be such a hugh load (the
entire grid) on your generator when it was supplying power to an
otherwise unpowered grid, it will see that load as a dead short circuit

The whole point, of course, is that it wouldn't be supplying the grid - only
up to the first break. I don't know how far you could go before that would
look like a short to your generator, but after Hurricane Juan, one friend
had three breaks in the 14 pole run from the road to his house - he could
easily have had his generator running out of sight and sound from the
linemen who fixed it.

 

[Derek Broughton]

I ontario Canada there would be prison terms for the management
responsible for this process.

Please stop top posting.

Of course there should be consequences for the idiots who violate procedure,
but that doesn't alter the fact that generators _can_ backfeed, and the
people who are at risk aren't necessarily the linemen. Consider the
possibility of a line dangling but not actually grounded (probably unlikely
- they tend to snap well between the poles, and both ends ground, but still
possible). That line is then a danger to _anybody_ if it's being fed from
a local generator, and the average person is clearly not sensible enough to
stay away.

 

[Me]

Then your "safety shorting straps were not placed correctly. More training
and insght need to be applied on Equipotentila grounding to avoid radial
ground step potential gradients.

and another IDIOT, spews drivel, he has no knowledge of......


Me

 

[Dale Farmer]

I know of many, many people that particpated in the Ice Storm you refer to
and have never heard of one incident as such.

You are stating that some farmer is smart enough to size and buy a
generator, hook it up and feed his equipment properly but doesn't know
enough to open his switch not to feed all the other farms on the circuit
after the circuit interuption? Buloney!

Your hypothetical farmer is going to forget to open the switch some
amount of the times that the generator is needed. Granted that in some
of the cases, the generator bogging down due to all the other farms that
are isolated with the farm in a circuit segment will bring the mistake to
notice. But out away from the city, where you have only one house
or farm being fed by a line of poles, if the break is on that run, there is
no other load out there to bring them to the notice of the farmer. There
is also the case where Joe the farmer doesn't have a good grasp on
electricity, and the thing was rigged up by his good buddy Ed from
down the street who does. Ed is very unlikely to forget to disconnect
the main switch, Joe on the other hand, can't quite remember how to do
it, and the phone is out too, so he can't get Ed to remind him how.
Very small chance for one given location to back feed the grid. But
when you multiply that chance by tens or hundreds of thousands of
customers, then it becomes rather a high likelyhood.

--Dale

 

[Derek Broughton]

Please stop trolling

<plonk>

 

[Derek Broughton]

Your hypothetical farmer is going to forget to open the switch some
amount of the times that the generator is needed. Granted that in some
of the cases, the generator bogging down due to all the other farms that
are isolated with the farm in a circuit segment will bring the mistake to
notice. But out away from the city, where you have only one house
or farm being fed by a line of poles, if the break is on that run, there

Absolutely. In any case, I don't much care if the story was true (I didn't
say it was - just that that was what the _utilities_ had claimed), the fact
that it is being propagated _by_ the utilities takes it out of the realm of
urban myth. It might simply be propaganda, but it isn't myth.

In any case despite Flare's stupid insistence that anyone who does suffer
from such backfeed deserves what they get, it's clearly _possible_ and
that's why we have safety regulations.

 

[Dave Hinz]

Please stop trolling

He's not trolling, he's telling you how you're wrong.

Nobody is worried about the line snapping and dangling on the ground with
some tingle voltage from a backfeeding generator.

Except for the guy whose job is to fix that line.

You are getting into double contingency here and good engineering people
have to discount the whole thing as rubbish. The backfeed story is just
that. a story made up to give simple reason that Joe Public can understand.

So you have discredited the two or more links posted here as urban
legends? Can you show your evidence for such a dismissal?


Oh, and please stop top-posting. It fucks up the flow of the
conversation.

 

[Me]

Perhaps you should take some training before you become a complete asshole
and everybody recognizes you for it?

Worked in the field for a lot of years......Tell us all how many years
you have in the Power Distribution Biz?...... Just another "Wanna Be"
spewing drivel....


Me

 

[daestrom]

Absolutely. In any case, I don't much care if the story was true (I
didn't
say it was - just that that was what the _utilities_ had claimed), the
fact
that it is being propagated _by_ the utilities takes it out of the realm
of
urban myth. It might simply be propaganda, but it isn't myth.

In any case despite Flare's stupid insistence that anyone who does suffer
from such backfeed deserves what they get, it's clearly _possible_ and
that's why we have safety regulations.
--

Our utility, NationalGrid (formerly NiagaraMohawk) has a 'little' trailer of
a mockup of a couple of poles and typical service entrance they use for
training various volunteer fire departments, rescue squads and such. They
come to your parking lot, set things up, have a *real* line crew go through
all the safety precautions and stuff.

Then they show the fireman how a fireman's 'rubber' boot is absolutely
*useless* for electrical protection by drawing a 4160 arc thru it to ground.
They put a live line across a 'car' (and old klunker they bring with them)
and show the arc when they attempt to ground the frame so rescue squads can
understand the risks of touching a car trapped by a live line.

And one little part of the demonstration is a little 3000 watt homelite
portable generator fed into the 'residential service' panel. They
disconnect the normal supply, and with just this little portable unit
running, supplying a couple of light-bulbs in the 'service panel', and
backfeeding to the 'pole pig' and such. Then they proceed to use a hot
stick to try and connect a ground clamp on the 4160 line. As you might
expect, the 'arc and sparks' are impressive (when seen from a distance).
The lineman was able to draw a couple of feet long arc and sustain it for
almost 30 seconds while the generator just buzzed along.

Depending where a break is, and the surrounding T&D lines, a 'little
portable generator' can be quite a hazard. And all it takes is one screw up
and the homeowner will find themselves paying lawyers for years. That's why
the NEC and CEC require the types of disconnects they do.

daestrom

 

[Nick Hull]

Not an option.

The generator feeds the house and that's how I'm going to use it. I'm
certainly not going to start moving and unplugging equipment every time we
lose power.

It's a 240V 30A output on the generator, so that requires #10 solid copper.

10 is a very cumbersome wire to roll up and work with, so I'd rather get
something flexible.

Why roll it up at all? I use a seni-permanent #10 solid and leave it
plugged into a dummy socket right next to the one I use for xxxxfeed.

 

[[email protected]]

Why roll it up at all? I use a seni-permanent #10 solid and leave it
plugged into a dummy socket right next to the one I use for xxxxfeed.

If you were using a fused, rather than breaker main panel you could
connect the generator semi-permanently, and have 2 main switches -
using the same fuse cartridge, Pull the fuse from the main, and
install in the gen panel. As long as there are no spare fuses floating
atound, you are failsafe.

I only feed 2 circuits in my panel, and they backfeed through a fuse
block that gets moved from the main panel to the sub. The fuse block
when removed from the main panel isolates those circuits from the
line", and when plugged into the sub panel, connects them to the
generator. When on "line" they are on opposite sides of the line -
when on the generator(110 only) they are tied together.

 

[Richard]

LOL! This is usenet. You can't tell others what to do.

Sound familiar, you dolt?

By the way, my cables are all made up and working great. I thank those who
actually provided help rather than getting on their soapbox.

Ran the house for about 4 hours over the weekend just to see how it
performed. Perfectly, as expected.

Oh, and as an added bonus, I didn't fry any linemen. I know this may
dissapoint some of you who actually believe this is an every day
phenomenon.

Bring on the storms. I'm ready.

 

[Dave Hinz]

LOL! This is usenet. You can't tell others what to do.

You're right, of course, but idiots who insist on doing things that are
antisocial and arrogant end up getting ignored.

Sound familiar, you dolt?

Amazing. Unsafe, _and_ antisocial.

By the way, my cables are all made up and working great. I thank those who
actually provided help rather than getting on their soapbox.

Hope to hell you never kill someone with your backfeed setup, because
this thread will look pretty damn bad to a judge and jury in your trial.

Ran the house for about 4 hours over the weekend just to see how it
performed. Perfectly, as expected.

Oh, and as an added bonus, I didn't fry any linemen. I know this may
dissapoint some of you who actually believe this is an every day
phenomenon.

Nobody said that.

Bring on the storms. I'm ready.

Don't **** up. Oh, and <plonk>, top-poster.

 

[Me]

33

Then you should know better......and if you don't, it must be
a BrainFart.....


Me

 

[Derek Broughton]

LOL! This is usenet. You can't tell others what to do.

Asshole. That was a polite request.
<plonk>

 

[Dave Hinz]

Asshole. That was a polite request.
<plonk>

Yup, but we didn't tell him what to do....he can talk to himself now.