Stormin Mormon wrote:
Most brands: Under 1/10 second.
Federal Pacific Electric: Well over 5 years before it trips.

With no breaker, my WAG is that either a secondary wire on
the generator overheats and burns out, or the motor slows to
stall point. Either of those in two to ten seconds. Easily
enough time to kill a pole worker.

a) it'll be out of phase and very unlikely at all to not stall it
immediately; the overload is later

b) it was postulated the line was _already_ live; the gen-set in this
case wouldn't be the culprit (altho still both illegal and stupid trick
to pull).

Back-feed to distribution system is a serious problem when the line is
_supposed_to_be_ disconnected (and has been by the utility or known
damage) so the presence of voltage is unexpected. If they know they're
working on stuff live then they won't work as if they were working on a
(known) disconnected line. Where it's really a problem (and got one of
our local co-op linemen a few years ago) is a situation such as a
disconnected line, actually confirm it was isolated and talk to the
farmstead owner who subsequently got impatient and hooked up the gen-set
while they were still working w/o notifying them...

Moral of story as homeowner is--don't be an ass or dumb****...

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