Our Utility has cracked down on this in the last few years. They’ll send someone out as soon as they notice somethings up with their meter, and if you are working on it they’ll call the AHJ immediately. It wasn’t all that long ago we’d get a handful of meter seals from one of their field techs so we could pull the meters ourselves and not waste their time.
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Electrical permitting question
- Thread starter KarlVP
- Start date
Our Utility has cracked down on this in the last few years. They’ll send someone out as soon as they notice somethings up with their meter, and if you are working on it they’ll call the AHJ immediately. It wasn’t all that long ago we’d get a handful of meter seals from one of their field techs so we could pull the meters ourselves and not waste their time.
The garage is a nice dark storage shed without their power supply that they shut off because someone didn’t follow their rules. Utilities hold all of the cards in these situations. They know you can’t just call another utility to get power if you don’t like their rules.
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The back feed concern the way I understand it is more for neighborhoods where one transformer feeds a single house. With a 24kw genset you could easily shock the fuck out of someone a block away if they were working on the lines when it kicked on. Once it tried picking up the load of 6 or 8 houses it would fall flat and trip the generator main.
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IGT
Almost done
So the feeder, 7200 VAC, is broken in two between the substation and your house, single phase.
This line has two spans after the break with your transformer and at your house your generator running with no transfer switch.
‘The only load is your house and the transformer reactive power to energize it.
You started your generator after being out of power.
The first span after the break has the phase hanging down from the insulator on the pole two feet off the ground.
Your kid walks out to play in the back yard with a piece of #2 aluminum conductor hanging two feet off the ground that is energized to 7200 VAC by your generator.
Does the 5 HP generator have enough HP to kill you. You God Damn right at 7200 volts and it will do it in three cycles, 3/60th of a second
I do this stuff for a living for 30 years. I don’t need to ask Myth Busters or call a lineman.
Saloon65
Red Skull Member
That..^^^
I've got probably around two miles of primary line between my meter and the next customer: tree takes out that line anywhere, breaks the hot conductor, and I've suddenly got a heck of a lot of no-load energized wire hanging out there waiting to smoke the next unsuspecting lineman..
Derp
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2big bronco
Og irate
Ive always wondered how many houses down the line would get enough useable power. Wouldnt all yhe lines running to the vast nothingness of the electrical grid use up a lot? I mean if there was an easy way and im paying for fuel anyways i wouldnt mind powering the 9 or so houses on my road.
Derp
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I think the whole premise of not being able to run a generator connected to the grid is based on the assumption that we all have dinky portable home generators in the ~3500W range.
You're probably the only one here who does have a generator that would power a whole neighborhood though, aren't you? You probably do run a chance of killing a buss load of lineman nuns, should probably listen to IGT on this one and not try it
IGT
Almost done
A lot of variables trying to explain scenarios where you supply power to your neighbors.
The utility isn’t probably going to let you use their primary lines to feed your neighbors. You running secondary lines, with transfer switches, might be a option.
In a extended outage of weeks you might work something out.
‘Seen this done after a hurricane in Louisiana.
No, you can’t feed the whole utility grid. If you tried your generator breaker would trip because of to much amps/load.
IGT
Almost done
I think the whole premise of not being able to run a generator connected to the grid is based on the assumption that we all have dinky portable home generators in the ~3500W range.
You're probably the only one here who does have a generator that would power a whole neighborhood though, aren't you? You probably do run a chance of killing a buss load of lineman nuns, should probably listen to IGT on this one and not try it
Hey Derp,
When you get your Electrical Engineering Degree, Journeyman Lineman’s card, or Journeyman Electrician’s card please come back in this thread and tell us how all this works.
‘Better have some work experience to shore up your opinions
![[486]](https://data.irate4x4.com/avatars/m/0/94.jpg?1700178133){kind=avatar}
[486]
ugh, that guy again?
maybe one of them switches I see on poles sometimes
if the whole neighborhood has one line going in, see if there's one of them that you could open up
it's like a pipe on the side of the power pole with a folding handle and a padlock on the bottom, then up top there's some sorta switchy bits
if the whole neighborhood has one line going in, see if there's one of them that you could open up
it's like a pipe on the side of the power pole with a folding handle and a padlock on the bottom, then up top there's some sorta switchy bits
Chevy_man
Leftjizz
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You don't even want to try. Too much liability.
The typical backup I install is 22kw. Unless the break is right at your house, it's going to trip out once it sees load from the grid.
A simple transfer switch isn't hard and will keep you legal and not liable. Too cheap to not do it right.
Derp
Involuntary Chest Slapper
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Hey Derp,
When you get your Electrical Engineering Degree, Journeyman Lineman’s card, or Journeyman Electrician’s card please come back in this thread and tell us how all this works.
‘Better have some work experience to shore up your opinions
No way, I'm way too dumb for that, I only know obvious stuff. Like an engineer and a journeyman would never agree on how something should be done.
2big bronco
Og irate
I have no intention of trying at all. Mine is 125kw
Gregj50!!!!!
Boob
I’m disappointed..... read the whole thread.... no Waterhorse!!!!!!
djljeep
Well-known member
I started trying to multi-quote, but said fuck it.
I'm an electrical engineer that specializes on utilities and substations. Couple things here:
Your little baby 3kW standby can absolutely hurt somebody on the line. I agree that more likely than not, if the main was left open the generator would die or trip almost immediately. However it can still light up somebody close by before it trips. One cycle is 16 milliseconds, and it all depends on what point of the sine wave the voltage is at when you fault it to ground through your body. The longer the fault, the higher the probability of not having a fun time. I can't remember what the current required to cause cardiac problems is, but its well under .1 Amps. Remember that you aren't lighting up the lineman with 240V, you are lighting him up with whatever your single phase Distribution voltage is - anywhere from 1700V to 19.9kV, most likely ~7200V.
To the point of "trying to energize the neighborhood" - that is most likely going to kill the generator, but not necessarily - you might think the example somebody above gave for a split conductor being so unlikely not to worry about (which I would personally disagree, in the northeast we have trees fall on the lines and break shit all the time), also consider the protection schemes the distribution line has. They are setup to use (theoretically) coordinated protective elements to isolate the fault while minimizing outages. If everything works correctly (and it often doesn't, but whatever) when a tree hits the line on your road, the substation breaker doesn't trip out the whole circuit, it recloses to let the fuse at the end of your road clear it. If that doesn't work there is normally a series of pole mounted reclosers that do the same thing (that's what is happening when the lights go out and come back on 3-4 times). So depending on where you live on your circuit, your chunk of grid could be isolated to, say, the 4 houses in your subdivision, or you and your neighbor that share a driveway/road, or whatever. That'll probably kill your harbor freight 3kw generator, but your typical 16-22kw standby has more than enough power to energize a couple houses if its not peak-load. Consider how many houses you've seen tapped from the same 15 or 25kva pole mounted can - and they run like that all the time. I'm not saying the generator will be happy, or that it'll last long, but it'll last long enough to cause a problem.
Also consider that you guys are assuming somebody gets hurt from contact with an energized primary, but there is also a threat from ground faults. When something faults a line, the current travels into the earth and tries to return to its source, which is most likely the step down transformer at your local substation, but in this hypothetical back feed situation, is the ground rod at your transformer, via the ground rod nearest to the fault and the neutral wire. Well earth has a resistance, and you are flowing current through it, so now the earth itself at the fault isn't 0V anymore. Now it could be a couple thousand volts from wherever the fault is to some other point (depending on a lot of variables). That's known as a ground potential rise, and that's why big power systems and substation have copper ground grids. So it might not be the lineman in the bucket getting hit, it could be the ground guy getting shocked between his feet by a step potential. I don't feel like this is likely from a home generator from a lack of available fault current, but it is hypothetically possible.
And yeah, the lineman is probably going to treat the line like its live, and ground it out, but hey, sometimes people fuck up. And in my neck of the woods, we have outages so often the linemen don't go looking for generators. maybe if its like literally within sight they might go check that the service disconnect is out or that a transfer switch is involved, but I've never seen anybody get puffy in the chest about it pulling meters unless somebody really earned it by being a dick or unless there was an emergency situation happening.
The most likely thing that is going to happen if you leave your main on with a generator running that somehow doesn't trip out, is that when the grid comes back it is going to violently try to put your generator on phase and on frequency, and its not going to like it.
That being said, plenty of people still make suicide cords, and I'll admit I made one winter trying to make due with what I had in the middle of the night. And if you do it right and isolate things correctly you really aren't putting people in imminent danger, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Transfer switches are cheap and make life easier anyway. Or if you like back feeding a receptacle, they make interlock kits so the main and branch breaker cant be on at the same time.
TL;DR
Yes a generator can hurt somebody on the line.
I'm an electrical engineer that specializes on utilities and substations. Couple things here:
Your little baby 3kW standby can absolutely hurt somebody on the line. I agree that more likely than not, if the main was left open the generator would die or trip almost immediately. However it can still light up somebody close by before it trips. One cycle is 16 milliseconds, and it all depends on what point of the sine wave the voltage is at when you fault it to ground through your body. The longer the fault, the higher the probability of not having a fun time. I can't remember what the current required to cause cardiac problems is, but its well under .1 Amps. Remember that you aren't lighting up the lineman with 240V, you are lighting him up with whatever your single phase Distribution voltage is - anywhere from 1700V to 19.9kV, most likely ~7200V.
To the point of "trying to energize the neighborhood" - that is most likely going to kill the generator, but not necessarily - you might think the example somebody above gave for a split conductor being so unlikely not to worry about (which I would personally disagree, in the northeast we have trees fall on the lines and break shit all the time), also consider the protection schemes the distribution line has. They are setup to use (theoretically) coordinated protective elements to isolate the fault while minimizing outages. If everything works correctly (and it often doesn't, but whatever) when a tree hits the line on your road, the substation breaker doesn't trip out the whole circuit, it recloses to let the fuse at the end of your road clear it. If that doesn't work there is normally a series of pole mounted reclosers that do the same thing (that's what is happening when the lights go out and come back on 3-4 times). So depending on where you live on your circuit, your chunk of grid could be isolated to, say, the 4 houses in your subdivision, or you and your neighbor that share a driveway/road, or whatever. That'll probably kill your harbor freight 3kw generator, but your typical 16-22kw standby has more than enough power to energize a couple houses if its not peak-load. Consider how many houses you've seen tapped from the same 15 or 25kva pole mounted can - and they run like that all the time. I'm not saying the generator will be happy, or that it'll last long, but it'll last long enough to cause a problem.
Also consider that you guys are assuming somebody gets hurt from contact with an energized primary, but there is also a threat from ground faults. When something faults a line, the current travels into the earth and tries to return to its source, which is most likely the step down transformer at your local substation, but in this hypothetical back feed situation, is the ground rod at your transformer, via the ground rod nearest to the fault and the neutral wire. Well earth has a resistance, and you are flowing current through it, so now the earth itself at the fault isn't 0V anymore. Now it could be a couple thousand volts from wherever the fault is to some other point (depending on a lot of variables). That's known as a ground potential rise, and that's why big power systems and substation have copper ground grids. So it might not be the lineman in the bucket getting hit, it could be the ground guy getting shocked between his feet by a step potential. I don't feel like this is likely from a home generator from a lack of available fault current, but it is hypothetically possible.
And yeah, the lineman is probably going to treat the line like its live, and ground it out, but hey, sometimes people fuck up. And in my neck of the woods, we have outages so often the linemen don't go looking for generators. maybe if its like literally within sight they might go check that the service disconnect is out or that a transfer switch is involved, but I've never seen anybody get puffy in the chest about it pulling meters unless somebody really earned it by being a dick or unless there was an emergency situation happening.
The most likely thing that is going to happen if you leave your main on with a generator running that somehow doesn't trip out, is that when the grid comes back it is going to violently try to put your generator on phase and on frequency, and its not going to like it.
That being said, plenty of people still make suicide cords, and I'll admit I made one winter trying to make due with what I had in the middle of the night. And if you do it right and isolate things correctly you really aren't putting people in imminent danger, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Transfer switches are cheap and make life easier anyway. Or if you like back feeding a receptacle, they make interlock kits so the main and branch breaker cant be on at the same time.
TL;DR
Yes a generator can hurt somebody on the line.
Chevy_man
Leftjizz
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Derp
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You obviously know what you are talking about. Thanks for taking the time to give such a detailed and understandable explanation.
Not sure about a tilt switch, but ours know they have been pulled by loss of voltage and send a signal as the Capacitor/battery dies, So we know its been pulled, Then Dispatch does a check on other meters off the same transformer. And then dispatches an order to ME. IDGAS you pulled your meter for maintenance/repairs.
Your doing a transfer switch, I want to know it's right, and would probably dime you out to the city if you don't look like you know what your doing.
but pulling your meter on my end does not red flag you for a permit. but I will come back in 10 days or so to see what you did and that your not stealing or trying to kill me and reseal the meter.
you don't like any of that ??
YMMV with your utility
dave_dj1
Red Skull Member
Muckin_Slusher
****
Great post!
Now do your take on Waterhorse ran a feed from his house to his rental house for backup power (both houses have their own meter).
Please!
arse_sidewards
Red Skull Member
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Moral of the story: Nut up and work live.
Tranformers generally don't give a shit what direction they're sending the angry pixies. They'll happily step up your 220v to whatever the dist. line voltage is.
IGT
Almost done
Yes, AC transformers do not care which direction current and voltage flows.
arse_sidewards
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Muckin_Slusher
****
"only" 2A.
Not sure your point here, but 2 amps can kill the fuck outta you.
Not only will it kill you, but it's gonna hurt the whole time you're dying.
djljeep
Well-known member
Yes, lines get segmented from damage or protective devices all the time.
And yes, transformer doesnt care which way current flows. You can step up 240V to 7200V.
IEEE says 2A kills you real good under certain conditions.
Side Note, They don't make science like they used to.
Yes, if you stick a couple needles into a vein and the current runs through your heart you can kill yourself with a AA battery. Is that going to happen from this? Probably not. I have gotten hit with 220V enough times that I should be dead by those standards. I have also gotten hit with 50,000 of an Crane HI-6 ignition. But at only 510MJ it just makes your arm go numb for a few seconds. With the line and transformer losses, that 2A would be less to trip the breaker on the genset. You would have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting killed by that.
"only" 2A.
Not sure your point here, but 2 amps can kill the fuck outta you.
Not only will it kill you, but it's gonna hurt the whole time you're dying.
See above, been hit with well over 2A many times, still kicking.
You sure you guys aren't secretly turning into democrats? Awful lot of sandy vajay-jays in here. Should I wear a mask while doing electrical work to protect me from random ozone discharge?