Interlock vs. throwing the main circuit breaker for generator powering a house

[MossRoad]

Sometimes the landing gear should be up when touching down .

Depends.... (not the diapers, the circumstances)

 

[Ford850]

I've seen about half a dozen guys forget to put the landing gear down when I worked at the airport many years ago. There's usually a nice long white streak down the center of the runway, then turns to silver as the paint wears off of the aluminum as it slides along....

Where does the brown streak start?

 

[turnkey4099]

Where does the brown streak start?

The one on the ground or on the seat? I have left both ones a time or two.

 

[MossRoad]

Where does the brown streak start?

About 3' after they hear the props start ting'ing on the concrete, from what I have been told.

 

[RalphVa]

And maybe killing a worker on a (what they thought was) down system.

Ralph

 

[Industrial Toys]

Oh yeah. Every outage, the linemen are just dropping like flies in the old Zapper!

 

[RickB]

Oh yeah. Every outage, the linemen are just dropping like flies in the old Zapper!

I was wondering, but here is the proof that you are an idiot. #3 on my ignore list in nearly 20 years I’ve been here.

 

[Industrial Toys]

And you too. Linemen are really that careless and there are no safety precautions. Use your brain and a little common sense for crying out loud. And bad in simple math too it seems.

 

[4570Man]

And you too. Linemen are really that careless and there are no safety precautions. Use your brain and a little common sense for crying out loud. And bad in simple math too it seems.

A lineman would be a fool to work on a line that’s not grounded and wouldn’t last long. There’s far too much potential for that line to be back fed or touching another live line or not be dead in the first place.

 

[kco]

I would worry more about non-linemen getting electrocuted. As noted, linemen(I was one long, long ago) know the hazards and take precautions. Many neighbours don't recognize the hazard. They are the ones who might assume a line is safe because the power is out. They may also see the open switch due to the blown fuse at the start of the feeder, and assume it is fine to move a downed conductor to drive by.

We get 2 to 4 lengthy outages per year where I live with most due to trees or large branches breaking a conductor. Our tap with 4 or 5 circuit miles and about 20 services averages one or two such outages per year. Although a small generator may not be able to energize such a system for long it could energize a small isolated section and a larger section long enough to kill someone if they happened to be moving a conductor off the road.

I have personal knowledge of one of our contractors being electrocuted with back-feed from a small generator while working on a de-energized line. It was in 1968 at Crossfield, Alberta. The crew was reconfiguring some lines and supplied a small generator to feed the Esso gas station (no longer there) at the highway. They followed proper grounding procedures and finished their work. The lineman was electrocuted when he removed the ground with the generator was still running. One would have thought that impossible because the generator would fail if feeding a grounded system. However, this was a generator purchased from the old DEW(distant early warning) line system. It was designed for greater reliability with a feature that collapsed the field(so it could not generate but would still run) in the event of a fault.

We can't anticipate all the things that can go wrong and must be very careful to ensure there is no possibility of back-feeding to the utility power system.