Generator backfeeding into utility lines

[ultrarunner]

People seem to always call a pole with wire on it a telephone pole. Why I don't know. The only time it's a telephone pole is when there is JUST telephone wire on it...all other times the electrical utility owns the pole and rents space to the communication utilities and it is properly called a power pole.

Per a retired phone company lineman... telephone poles where here first.

Don't know if what he said is true... but he is sticking to it...

 

[brokenot]

I dropped the female end of a live extension cord into a sump pit filled with water just the other day, scared the heck out of me thinking something was gonna blow up, but nothing happened, just pulled it out, didn't even trip the breaker.

That's not surprising....ever seen anyone "load bank" a generator with saltwater? Sometimes the salt is added to water in a given ratio to achieve the desired conductivity and then the generator's output "probes" are inserted into the brine a little at a time to vary the load. Other folks just insert the probes completely into the water with the genny breaker on and then starting tossing in salt until the desired load is applied.

Watch this clip with a couple of portables:

Generator load test - YouTube

Google "salt water load bank" or "salt water dummy load". There's some pretty interesting stuff.

 

[JB4310]

That's not surprising....ever seen anyone "load bank" a generator with saltwater? Sometimes the salt is added to water in a given ratio to achieve the desired conductivity and then the generator's output "probes" are inserted into the brine a little at a time to vary the load. Other folks just insert the probes completely into the water with the genny breaker on and then starting tossing in salt until the desired load is applied.

Watch this clip with a couple of portables:

Generator load test - YouTube

Google "salt water load bank" or "salt water dummy load". There's some pretty interesting stuff.

Interesting, I don't completely understand what's going on there, but the guy seems pretty confident he knows what he's doing.

JB.

 

[BobRip]

The power lines are not copper any more. Much to expensive. Aluminum is used.

 

[JB4310]

I've heard of it happening but I never personally saw it. WHY that is such a rare event is open to much conjecture...it might be that the Sask Power customers are too cheap to actually buy generators or the outages (which are rarely of any real duration) are just too short for most people with a generator to bother hooking it up if it isn't absolutely necessary to do so. I'd like to think that the people who do have generators are also intelligent enough to have a proper hook up that prevents any backfeeding situation.

Maybe Canadians are just smarter

Seriously, maybe a little closer to the basics ????

Or maybe just math, less of them so, even on a per capita basis, less idiots?

JB

 

[crazyal]

So this poses a whole new question. With the number of people who now have some form of green power (solar, wind, etc.) that at any point in time can feed power back into the grid at any point in time I can't see how any lineman would ever work on a line without protecting themselves first.

 

[brokenot]

Interesting, I don't completely understand what's going on there, but the guy seems pretty confident he knows what he's doing.

The saltwater is basically a liquid rheostat that can be adjusted to obtain the desired resistance by changing the concentration of salt and/or varying the exposure area of the submerged probes attached to the generator.

More information here:

Liquid rheostat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Here's another clip, this one shows two Cat generators being load tested with a salt water tank. A bit more intimidating than the other video...this setup is @440 volts and 640 kilowatts. It gets interesting at 1:20 or so:

Generator Load Test. - YouTube

:thumbsup:

 

[Qapla]

People seem to always call a pole with wire on it a telephone pole. Why I don't know. The only time it's a telephone pole is when there is JUST telephone wire on it...all other times the electrical utility owns the pole and rents space to the communication utilities and it is properly called a power pole.

Per a retired phone company lineman... telephone poles where here first...

Actually, I think "Telegraph" poles where here first.

A better term is probably "Utility Pole"

 

[timswi]

hehe, this is the 4th or 5th post like this that Ive seen in the past month. Bottom line is its illegal to back-feed a house without the use of an interlock. Period. That being said they are available for under $20 at most wholesale houses for a basic butterfly interlock (for small subpanels) to about $100 for an intricate heavy duty unit (for main panels). Siemens now has a panel with a built in generator subpanel that can handle either a manual trasfer switch OR any brand of automatic transfer switch controls, and costs about $300 (wholesale)

Not to ague the legaities because I really don't know and nothing around my area has ever said anything to that end.

That being said, if it was illegal, I would think that the 2 firemen at the beginning of the right away wouldn't be backfeeding and they do.

When the utility company came to re-string the downed lines, they stopped at each of our houses and asked us to shut down our generators...No one was fined or arrested.

Again, I know full well that this dangerous if you don't know what you're doing and I can certainly see the risk from a novice user.


I believe that the utility company came out with a meter mounted transfer switch..One of these days I'm going to look into that.
I personally would prefer a whole house standby unit. Just not practical for me given the very limited number of outages that we experience.

 

[grsthegreat]

Not to ague the legaities because I really don't know and nothing around my area has ever said anything to that end.

That being said, if it was illegal, I would think that the 2 firemen at the beginning of the right away wouldn't be backfeeding and they do.

When the utility company came to re-string the downed lines, they stopped at each of our houses and asked us to shut down our generators...No one was fined or arrested.

Again, I know full well that this dangerous if you don't know what you're doing and I can certainly see the risk from a novice user.


I believe that the utility company came out with a meter mounted transfer switch..One of these days I'm going to look into that.
I personally would prefer a whole house standby unit. Just not practical for me given the very limited number of outages that we experience.

Not sure about your neck of the woods, but here in pacific northwest...illegal. The utility companies will shut off and lock out the power if they find out you have it wired illegally until its fixed. They are always sending out notices asking people to fix illegal wiring, They will even inspect the installations for free and recommend mitigation issues. Its real easy to spot most perminant mount units