Suicide cord warning!

Here’s safer ways to power your house from a portable generator…

Dear Mike,

I have a Honda EU3000is generator that I have used with my RV on a few occasions.

I now use it as a house backup generator when needed by connecting the two 110v outlets to two wall outlets that are on each side of the power panel, providing power to circuits o can n both sides.  We do not attempt to use any 240 volt appliances when doing this, as I believe they need two phase 240 which this does not provide. And I open the main circuit breaker to the panel to kill connection to power lines before setting up.

I have done this several times over the years without any issues, but wondered if there are concerns I am not addressing. Thanks for all you do to educate us users. - Don T.

Dear Don T.

What you’re doing is using something called a suicide cord. This is named so because if you don’t do everything exactly right, you can kill a power company lineman or even yourself.

Here’s why…

What happens is that the blades of the male 15-amp plug connected to your home outlet will be energized by your generator. So if you touch the bare blades on the male plug with your hands while the generator is on you can receive a shock.

And if you forget to turn off the main circuit breaker in your home service panel, your generator can feed back into the electrical grid and energize the power company wires around your house by up to 11,000 volts. That can kill a lineman who’s working to get the power to your house back on.

Install a home generator transfer switch

This is pretty involved and requires that you go into your home service panel, so you should really hire an electrician. But it’s a great way to use a smaller portable generator to power the essentials in your house.

Or get a generator interlock to protect the linemen

If you have a 240-volt generator like my Honda EU7000is, here is an inexpensive solution. Basically, you add a 2-pole, 30-amp generator circuit breaker to your home service panel with a male twist-lock inlet that can be connected to your generator with a twist-lock extension cord. The sliding interlock forces you to turn off the incoming circuit breaker before you can turn off the generator breaker. This is what I installed at my dad’s house.

Plug and Play (if your Power Company allows it)

This automatic transfer switch is the quickest (and perhaps most expensive) emergency generator connecting system, but some power companies are installing them for free if you get a portable generator that can power your house in an outage. California is installing them in some counties, and other states are doing free installs as well, so check with your local power company.

Read more by clicking the link below

For morecdetailed info on how these portable generator connecting systems work, please read my deep dive article on it HERE.

Let’s play safe out there… Mike