According to zxcvbob :
Chris Lewis wrote:

Certainly, during an emergency, you gotta do what you gotta do. But
planning and installing an illegal connection ahead of time is going
to knock that excuse down the toilet if anybody gets hurt.

During the great ice storm, I saw worse things when we gave
the worst hit areas some assistance with inspecting home generator
installations. But those were jury-rigged during a dire emergency,
and we made sure that they were as safe as they could possibly be.
Disconnected the scariest one - but fortunately, he was one of the
few who had just gotten power back.

Is it still illegal (notice I didn't ask if it was stupid or dangerous)
if you pull the electric meter before connecting the generator? Then
you are isolated from the utility grid, in fact more isolated than if
you had a transfer switch because those could theoretically fail.

You might have trouble getting the utility to reseal the meter, but I
don't think that would be a problem after a protracted power outage (the
"gotta do what you gotta do" principle)

Under "normal conditions", dicking around with your electric meter
would be presumed to be in aid of bypassing the meter. Especially
with the profusion of Grow Ops. I'd presume it's still illegal in
those places where it ever was illegal, or at least a possible invitation
to get the police to tear your house apart.

However, a power company is going to look pretty stupid prosecuting
people for asking for the meter to be reinstalled/resealed after a
power failure took out the whole _state_.

I've seen power companies _themselves_ say "you gotta
do what you gotta do, be damn careful, and we'll reconnect it for
you later no charge" in less dire situations.

[One example being finishing off a panel switchover that just
happened to collide with a power company strike, and they couldn't
supply anybody to move the feed.]

If in doubt, and to be on the safe side, I'd ask the power company.
If you can get through...

Of the generator connections we "inspected", by far the biggest
one was the one we made ourselves. Most of the generator setups
were portable 3-6Kw rigs. We were asked to install one for the
township in the "garage".

Thinking it's a little dinky 10Kw unit to go into a "garage",
the garage turned out to be the "public works installation".
Think: highway service depot. With a 200A service.

I'm having a smoke waiting for the generator, and this
70' tractor trailer pulls up with this enormous "thing" on it.

"Whassat?" I ask stupidly. "Your generator" was the reply.

Oh.... my....

The "thing" was a soil screener with a 200Kw 600V 3 phase generator.

Fortunately, the guy driving it knew how to connect it to a
transformer he had with him to drive 220V single phase ("sorry,
the transformer is only 75Kw". "So what? This whole building
can only take 40Kw!").

As I recall, we disconnected the output of the main disconnect,
taped off all the wire ends, and secured them safely.
Then spliced the 4-ought feeder cable directly into the input
of the 200A mains breaker.

[Spent about two hours doing a 15 minute job just to make
certain we (a) knew what we were doing before we did it,
(b) tested everything every step of the way and (c) made
the result as safe as we possibly could.]

We were surrounded by township workers, police and the military.

Instead of getting shot at, we got quite a round of cheering
when the whole place lit up, and they didn't have to dig road
salt and pump fuel by hand anymore. Not to mention being
warm and being able to get water.

That generator ran for over 3 weeks.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.