Steve Spence said:
.... What the concern is if your
breaker si closed, and a lineman is working on the lines, your generator
is feeding power to the transformer on your pole, and stepping up the
voltage (lowering the amps, as watts is watts). Not likely to do any
damage with the small generators most folks use, but it is a risk.
For a lineman to be hurt from a backfeeding generator, four things must
happen simultaniously:
1) Some idiot runs a generator connected to his house wiring with no proper
transfer switch and with his main breaker still closed. and...
2) Our idiot happens to have an isolated pole transformer that is so lightly
loaded that his generator does not somehow trip. and...
3) There happens to be a line crew working outside our idiot's house.
and...
4) That line crew is ignoring proper procedure and working in a criminally
negligent manner.
I think that #1 and #3 are possible, and #2 and #4 are vanishingly
unlikely. The possibility of all four of the above happening simultaniously
is barely worth our time to discuss...yet we do.
Vaughn