A proper suicide cable.

[Mad_Labs]

Well, I don't know how many get killed that way, but I have seen it happen. I live in a rural area where there are often multiple breaks when the power goes out. I have (in an extreme case) seen 17 separete break in the line between myself and the store, 5 miles away. As a volunteer firefighter, over the last 15 years I have seen two occasions where power was back-fed and caused HV to appear on downed lines. The linemen tell me that usually the wires wind up grounded and hence lose much of their power. The more breaks the more likely a substantial current can charge a section. So I can't speak to how often it is fatal but it certainly is real.

That said, I was a naughty boy for years in did use a non-interlocked system. There you are taking others lives in your hands, however remote. But I do the same thing every time I drive a car...

Jonathan

[Tom Reed]

Au contrair Mr. Glort, I've had the pissed off lineman supervisor pounding on my front door screaming that my generator almost fried one of his lineman. My generator was running at the time. I insisted it was not back feeding into the mains and after reluctantly agreeing to pull the meter he found that the mains were still hot and my meter side showed no voltage. Whew I was off the hook.

What had happened is that the power company had shut off the power 2 houses from mine to do some work on the lines. In my case 2 houses was just over a mile from my house. After pulling the mains switch the lineman was going to work on the line and the supervisor reminded him to check the line before working. To the lineman's surprise it was still hot!

Well it seems a couple a years my dope growing former neighbor was stealing power from the utility co and when they found out they shut off one of his services. The other service was down by the well just past the 2nd house down the road. Well my genius neighbor bought a 1000' roll of 6/3 wire and ran it from the well service to the house. After the the fines were paid and the service was turned back on the breaker that was back feeding from the well was switch off and the house was sold. Somewhere along the line the new neighbor switch the breaker back on not knowing what it was for and the trap was set...

[glort]

Well my genius neighbor bought a 1000' roll of 6/3 wire and ran it from the well service to the house.

So this wasn't back feeding from a generator at all then but rather another mains supply.

As a volunteer firefighter, over the last 15 years I have seen two occasions where power was back-fed and caused HV to appear on downed lines

So was this actually back feeding from a generator that you confirmed or was the source like above or not actually confirmed?

[vdubnut62]

I HAVE had a lineman ask if I was sure my Main breaker was off, and he did take my word for it.  Other than that, I am still hopper cooled, and use a dryer cord and a welder plug.
As a result, I am limited to "Dire Emergency" use.  And yes, I am aware of all the problems that COULD arise, thank you all for caring.
Ron.

[Mad_Labs]

Yup, in both cases it was a generator. It is easy to track it down out here, few houses and you can hear the genny. In one case it was a 10kW unit, and the other a small 2k ish. The small one was bogging and the owner was trying to figure out why. The large one was lighting up the circuit no problem. One case was obvious how it was connected and the the owner was simply clueless. The other was a bit of a mystery on an older ranch with lots of out buildings and ancient infrastructure. In that case the lineman pulled the meter.

So it really does happen.

Jonathan

[buickanddeere]

  I hear this all the time. Not enough time or money to install a proper interlocking transfer switch. As a utility worker it's frustrating and dangerous. Frustrating as no amount of explaining will make Bubba understand the double ended male cord does not make him smarter and sneakier than everybody else. To make it worse, usually into a three prong welder plug. Dangerous as some Bubba somewhere does eventually tie his generator backfed into the utility grid .
    Simply put. If you are not using a proper inspected generator transfer switch. You sir are a utter and complete fool.Why do you think you do not have to follow the rules ? How do you think you are smarter than utility engineers, utility inspectors, utility workers  and the writers of the National Electrical Code?
   Get off your wallet and install a transfer switch.

[buickanddeere]

Hypothetically of course.........To be common sense legal....maybe not UL or Insurance approved......I have a main disconnect under the meter that I can kill the grid to the farm for sure. I throw a lock on it and now the grid it is locked out! Some main panels have a lock and to me locking out the grid leaves it your business. I won't hurt someone on a pole just me! I then go out to the machine shed where my "oid" is and pull the cover off a sub main and have a cord wired up with a 20amp(15's are hard to find) 220 breaker. I snap in the breaker and connect the neutral and ground leave off the cover and turn off the breaker. Before all of this I have gone into the house and the shop and turned off all the breakers (my 6/1 won't run all of it!). Start my generator then go turn on what it can handle. I have to load share for sure but I can flush the toilet watch TV have lights pellet stove for heat refer for a cold one just not all at once! I'm sure it is not code but that is my way.......   

Blatantly illegal and dangerous. Good luck getting insurance is anything ever happens. Do you have something that you can sell or able to borrow some $$$ for a proper transfer switch?

[Derb]

Hi Fellas. Back-Feeding is alive and well in this world, don't you worry about that! I am a high voltage operator in an industrial site for a living and the instances of dickh.....ds back-feeding low voltage through to 11kv tx's is pure frightening during shuts. This has instigated a system of allowing only registered gensets on site and anyone breaking that rule can expect to be looking for a new job instantly regardless of back-feeding or not. This back-feeding is one of the greatest fears of linemen and tradesmen. A moments inattention and forgetting to disconnect to the grid and ..................................

[buickanddeere]

I HAVE had a lineman ask if I was sure my Main breaker was off, and he did take my word for it.  Other than that, I am still hopper cooled, and use a dryer cord and a welder plug.
As a result, I am limited to "Dire Emergency" use.  And yes, I am aware of all the problems that COULD arise, thank you all for caring.
Ron.

Worse yet you have connected the neutral from the generator to the ground on the welder plug. Do you not understand the hazards ? Do you have any intention of soon installing a proper transfer switch or a breaker interlock? Or are you exempt from the law of the law and exempt from the laws of physics?

[buickanddeere]

Hypothetically speaking of course.....There is a right way and a wrong way.  Let's say you have a residential house and you have built this big dinosaur generator into your detached garage with some kind of contraband chinese generator head that may or may not have UL or CSA approval. You find yourself in a major power outage and you really would like to power up your house but you haven't got around to having a proper generator priority panel installed and your generator may not pass code. I guess you could just sit in the cold and dark and have all your food spoil. Or maybe there is another way that an educated person could overcome this problem?  Come on, let's open up the big taboo subject!  I'll stick my neck out a little here, it involves a set of large twist lock connectors and a Dryer cord.

Tim SR2

So you have managed to go 90% of the way but are not going to finish the job properly? Just obtain and install a transfer switch or an approved breaker interlock on the main panel.

[buickanddeere]

Those poor buggers working on power line repairs after a long outage must be wondering when some guy will unexpectedly fire up his 10kw genny and plug it into an outlet, forgetting to shut off the mains, and back feed the dead wires he's working on.

Yeah, that's one of my favourite internet parroted hypothetical 10 million to 1 gloom and goom senerios.
The more you try to hypothesise the conditions which would need to be in place if you WANTED to make it happen, The more far fetched and unlikley it becomes.
Why is it always a power failure HAS to have people working on the lines? I only know enough about grid power supply to know that line breaks are the only cause of power failure.  Then of course one has to presume that the generator  is fired up after the line has been tested and that no Short line has been used which i am told here at least is standard procedure.  Then of course the errant generator has to be capeable of energising many miles of line AND everything connected to it from all the neighbours and everyone else. I would think that the load just from refrigerators in one street would be enough to trip out or fry a generator when they all kicked in. But of course we must assume that the break dosen't occour in a neighbourhood to support the fable, the beckfeeding -will- happen when somoene dosen't have a neighbour for 50 miles or the other people connected between the break and the genny have nothing swwitched on.  Yep, that's the most likley thing to happen in reality although Convinently people like to assume the line break is right outside the person who has the gennys house. Yeah, that dosen't increase the odds of likelyhood any does it?   

And of course after we get through with setting the scnerio just right so we can off this poor lineman that add up to about a 100 million to one shot, that seems too great to take any risk although fact proves you are in more danger of getting killed driving to work, we have a look at that most inconvinent internet hype killer, actual reports of the event happening.  The US is a pretty big place so if this were anywhere near the sort of danger that it is made out to be, I assume there are hundreds of documented cases of this happening. I wouldn't know what to search for but surely with linemen being fried left right and centre as they surely must, loads of people must have links to it happening.  I wonder what sort of percentage in the fatality of linemen, back feeding home generators score?  I even wonder if it's happened once in the last 5, 10 or 50 years?

Yep, got to love the far fetched parroted fables of the internet that bear no semblance to reality and fact!

Glort it's amazing what you will do to save a little bit of money and prove yourself so smart and more capable than the typical mortal.  I hereby invite you down to the local utility shop and tell your entire story to the linesmen.

[glort]

Glort it's amazing what you will do to save a little bit of money and prove yourself so smart and more capable than the typical mortal.  I hereby invite you down to the local utility shop and tell your entire story to the linesmen.

WHat's truly amazing is it took you more than 3 months to have a bitch and whine about comments people made in July! Been away in La La land have we??  Feeling bored and just having a bit of a troll or perhaps you felt the world was ignoring you and you wanted to let us know you haven't done yourself in yet by posting some of your trademark snied replys? All of the above perhaps?

I suppose you were too keen to grandstand and preach your own holier than thou comments to people to realise that I'm not  using one of these cables or trying to save any money with them at all.  For the backfeeding I do, I have fully approved and widely used equipment for that express purpose and more than one of them.  Why don't you come to see the linemen with me so you can tell me your thoughts in person? I'd be really interested to hear your comments in a face to face situation as things seem to get lost in the written word. You Tell the linemen all about what I have seeing you know so much and then we'll see what they say when I show them the pictures and fill them in on reality rather than flawed rantings from someone who needs to grow up.

If you pull your head out of your nether regions long enough and are able to actually comprehend what I said, You will see I was not advocating the use of these cables, I was just questioning the typical parroted mantras of their real and practical dangers.

[buickanddeere]

Glort it's amazing what you will do to save a little bit of money and prove yourself so smart and more capable than the typical mortal.  I hereby invite you down to the local utility shop and tell your entire story to the linesmen.

WHat's truly amazing is it took you more than 3 months to have a bitch and whine about comments people made in July! Been away in La La land have we??  Feeling bored and just having a bit of a troll or perhaps you felt the world was ignoring you and you wanted to let us know you haven't done yourself in yet by posting some of your trademark snied replys? All of the above perhaps?

I suppose you were too keen to grandstand and preach your own holier than thou comments to people to realise that I'm not  using one of these cables or trying to save any money with them at all.  For the backfeeding I do, I have fully approved and widely used equipment for that express purpose and more than one of them.  Why don't you come to see the linemen with me so you can tell me your thoughts in person? I'd be really interested to hear your comments in a face to face situation as things seem to get lost in the written word. You Tell the linemen all about what I have seeing you know so much and then we'll see what they say when I show them the pictures and fill them in on reality rather than flawed rantings from someone who needs to grow up.

If you pull your head out of your nether regions long enough and are able to actually comprehend what I said, You will see I was not advocating the use of these cables, I was just questioning the typical parroted mantras of their real and practical dangers.

  Says on my power utility paycheque that I work on that kind of equipment.