[PVRCNC] Re: [PVRC] Ice Report

[Pete Smith]

At 08:58 AM 12/9/02 -0500, Willie L. Baber wrote:
>Hi Jim:
>
>...glad to hear you and others report getting through ok.
>Next field day I will pay more attention to generators and
>such.  I purchased a 5,000 watt generator and as we were
>dragging it across the floor to get to the deck, the lights
>came on....Murphy in reverse, I guess.  Anyway, I'm ready
>next time but without any experience working with
>generators, hi!

This may be elementary for those of you who already have generators, so 
please excuse me for restating the obvious, but...

If you decide to get an emergency generator you should only connect it to 
your house system through a UL-approved transfer switch.

When I first thought about this, it seemed to me that I could just feed the 
220 into any 220-volt outlet, powering the 220volt bus off which the 
house's 220 and 110 circuits are fed.  I mentioned this thought on one of 
the reflectors and got handed my head by several current and former power 
workers.  Doing so can potentially put 220V on the lines from your house 
back to the transformer, to the great discomfort of any power lineman 
working on your service, and even put 7400 or 11000 volts on the high 
voltage primary. Sure, I said, but it's no problem if I pop the main AC 
service breaker, right?  Theoretically, I guess that's so, but the National 
Electrical Code says no, for understandable fail-safe reasons.

Also for safety reasons (though I'm less sympathetic with this), the code 
apparently requires that the circuits to be powered by the generator be 
hard-wired to the transfer switch, so that you're pretty much limited to 
pre-determined circuits.  For example, your pump power would come from the 
main panel, through the transfer switch, to the motor, with the transfer 
switch selecting either the panel or the generator at that point.  Ditto 
the furnace blower and any outlets you need to have power on.  I would have 
preferred to power the main panel either from the generator or the mains, 
and do my own power discipline, but apparently that's not OK.

As I said, all this is probably elementary to current generator users, but 
it was a revelation to me.


73, Pete N4ZR
Sometimes a tower is just a tower