Bull****. When you get proper training in line maitenance techniques
you will agree the whole argument that reappears every two months for
the last ten years is bull****.

and why? All because some amateur thinks he can beat the law and save
a few bucks and wants somebody here to back his scheme up so he can
feel smarter than the rules.


"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in
message ...
On Tue, 15 May 2007 22:43:36 -0400, wrote:

On Tue, 15 May 2007 21:16:55 GMT, "Vaughn Simon"
wrote:

Frankly, I am tired of the silliness that always results from
these transfer
switch threads.

I'd rather see some silliness, as long as the subject is fresh in
your mind when you go to hook up a generator - it's always the
preferred attitude over death-ness.

Although I would never advise someone to use a generator without a
listed transfer device (and that can be a breaker interlock if it
was
tested on that panel by a NRTL) but I agree, these threads get
silly.
Your puny little generator will not handle "the grid" for more than
a
few miliseconds. When it hits the locked rotor of your neighbor's AC
units it will trip out. Linemen are not going to die since they have
procedures that assume NOTHING is dead until they prove it and then
they short it out. I suppose if you did have a very localized
failure
you might light up a neighbor but the power company is likely to do
that too when they restore power.

The trick is where the primary line feeding your transformer goes
physically open, so you aren't trying to backfeed "the rest of the
grid" you are only energizing your own service transformer. If you
are the only house on that line there are no foreign loads to drag
down and stall your generator, but you're still boosting that 120V
and
sending 5KV to 35KV back down that string of poles.

(Gee, why is our streetlight out at the highway back on?)

If the line crew is out fixing the downed circuits, they know that
the line is off from the feed end, they've already done the
Lockout/Tagout and ground bond cable safety procedures. It's dead,
they made sure of it.

But if they are too far away from your homestead to hear your
little
generator chugging away, and they don't use the same level of
caution
in checking, ground bonding and handling the supposedly dead
load-side
power line that you are backfeeding...

"Don't worry about that line Charlie, it's dead..."

-- Bruce --