I got lucky tonight

[cognos]

That would be a good way to do it.

Not an option in my case, without a lot of rewiring, My meterbase/farm service is about 30 feet from my house on a pole, that's where I plug in the generator. The Mains triplex line runs overhead from the pole at the road around 100 feet up a steep hill to the farm service pole - then runs underground from there into my main distribution panel in the basement. Bizarre arrangement... but it makes hooking up a generator cheap, safe, and legal. If I start separating loads with pony panels and transfer switches, inspectors get involved...

[Wizard]

Cognos,

Must replace the switches for transfer switch.  Just in case because we do make mistakes.

If I ever own a place, I WILL put in transfer switch even on isolated critical circuits if I can with lister or a diesel slow speed engine for emergency power.

PS: Transfer switch is a switch but it has KEY feature that makes it legal and SAFER is breaks contacts first before make contacts.  Not at same time.

Cheers, Wizard

[cognos]

I actually mis-spoke, I do have a legal transfer switch - when you throw the lever, only one source of power can be connected to the house at one time. When the switch is set to supply the house from the generator connection, the mains are isolated - and vice-versa - and it is impossible to backfeed the mains with generator power - or vice-versa. When the switch is thrown, there is an overlap where everything is isolated from everything else.
There's a 200 amp breaker on the mains, and a 50 amp breaker on the generator plug, built into the meter panel.

It's a common setup in my area - for farms. I've never seen one on a house before!

Now, I've seen the automatic transfer switches. In my area, these have to be installed by an electrician, and inspected by Ontario Hydro, or, if something happens, your home insurance won't cover anything... even if it's unrelated to the installation.

We had a fairly long power outage locally a few years back - 3 to 4 days. Many of my neighbors went out and purchased generators. Some wired them in to their home panels, with varying degrees of success.. there were several fires, a couple of CO2 incidents... not something to mess with.

There was a brief flurry of purchases of those fully automatic, whole-house backup generator systems... that have run maybe 20, 30 minutes per year since... great, but I have better things to do with 5 to 7 thousand dollars...

In general, if there's a power outage, I wait for 3 to four hours before I even get the generator out of the garage and haul it (it's on wheels) the 150 feet or so and plug it into the service... I have a battery back-up system for lighting, TV, and radio that's kept up to charge by a small solar panel, good for 5 hours or so. It's all about load management, isn't it?