I had an electrician install an exterior outlet for our backup gen. The house was one of 15 homes built around 1977. We were both surprised when he went to the breaker panel to shut off the city power that there was no main breaker….very surprised! Anyway, he installed a new circuit breaker panel with a main breaker and an interlock. Maybe something about code at that time allowed for the original installation. All good now.
You wrote a very important article on generator power backup for homes during power outages. I like that you covered all sides of the solution. As an electrician, I recommend the interlock system. Clearly the simplest and least cost way to back feed a panel. As long as you purchase an interlock with UL or another certified rating, your insurance company won't object. There are electrical installations that make the interlock a poor choice but for the majority of households, it can be a solution.
I have a PG&E transfer meter and a generator breaker with a mechanical interlock device. I use the transfer meter when I can but I’ve discovered that it does not work under some brown-out conditions. If the line voltage does drop below a preset threshold, the transfer meter will not disconnect from the grid and you can’t use your generator even though there is not enough power to run your house. Plus, it is not a good thing to send brown out level voltage to refrigerators or other sensitive electronic devices. I have way more than the average number of power outages and have had to turn off the main breaker and use the mechanical interlock device when the transfer switch in the rare instance when brown out conditions occur. It’s good to have both options but I would always prefer to use the transfer meter when I can because it automatically switches off the power for a few seconds when the power comes back on and reconnects the house to the grid. This lets you know you can go and disconnect your generator. You don’t know when power is restored with a mechanical interlock device unless you have something like a Ting system installed which communicates grid with a monitoring service.
I had an electrician install an exterior outlet for our backup gen. The house was one of 15 homes built around 1977. We were both surprised when he went to the breaker panel to shut off the city power that there was no main breaker….very surprised! Anyway, he installed a new circuit breaker panel with a main breaker and an interlock. Maybe something about code at that time allowed for the original installation. All good now.
You wrote a very important article on generator power backup for homes during power outages. I like that you covered all sides of the solution. As an electrician, I recommend the interlock system. Clearly the simplest and least cost way to back feed a panel. As long as you purchase an interlock with UL or another certified rating, your insurance company won't object. There are electrical installations that make the interlock a poor choice but for the majority of households, it can be a solution.
I have a PG&E transfer meter and a generator breaker with a mechanical interlock device. I use the transfer meter when I can but I’ve discovered that it does not work under some brown-out conditions. If the line voltage does drop below a preset threshold, the transfer meter will not disconnect from the grid and you can’t use your generator even though there is not enough power to run your house. Plus, it is not a good thing to send brown out level voltage to refrigerators or other sensitive electronic devices. I have way more than the average number of power outages and have had to turn off the main breaker and use the mechanical interlock device when the transfer switch in the rare instance when brown out conditions occur. It’s good to have both options but I would always prefer to use the transfer meter when I can because it automatically switches off the power for a few seconds when the power comes back on and reconnects the house to the grid. This lets you know you can go and disconnect your generator. You don’t know when power is restored with a mechanical interlock device unless you have something like a Ting system installed which communicates grid with a monitoring service.