I agree that it is possible to feed electricity back into the lines if someone closes the main house breaker but that's a different subject. I also understand the code regarding a transfer switch, it's there to protect power line workers.
If you open the main breaker to your house (and keep it open as long as the generator is running), you can plug your generator right into your house wiring with a dual male cable. Open the breakers to the things that the generator won't run (heat/ac/oven/dryer) and let the generator power your lights and fridge. Personally, I think it's safer than running a bunch of extension cords.
I was talking to some guys in Home depot the other day and they indicated you can use a manual switch placed between two panels. The circuits you want to run on Generator are moved to a seperate panel. The switch is a 3 pole which you can either runn everything off of city power, or switch to teh generator side and run the backup circuits. This way the rest of the house is still on the primary power, but physically isolated from the backup circuits... Does that make sense? The middle man 3 pole switch is a lot cheaper than a automatic one...
I hear you on the mega switch you had and people not wanting to manually touch it. I had a computer center with backup Generators that we had to test once a month when in the military, and when that baby switched over, you would swear someone hit the box with a sledge hammer. I am scared to death of that kind of power. I've seen what it can do.
I escorted some electritians putting in a new buss bar one time, They had to disconnect the 3 phase coming in to the building, and each time they pulled the connectors, a 6 foot lightning bolt would jump out and make your hair stand on end... and I was standing 30 ft away. The stuff looked GREEN and made a powerfull crack noise....
draggin, thiat's referred to as a manual transfer switch and is perfectly fine. The automatic switches just do things automagically for you. They sense that loss of voltage and kick the switch over to the stand-by, then send the start and run signals to the generator. With a manual you do all that yourself. Open the switch, start the genny, kick the switch to the back-up source.
The reason those big switches are so loud is because they are usually operated by very strong springs. Even a really strong man isn't strong enough to switch the switches. There are a lot of main switches in the 2000+ amp range that are that way. You pump a handle that primes the switch and push a button and the switch goes. At those amperages you need the switch to move fast to reduce the arc. The arcing will burn up the switch contacts in no time.
Arcing can also cause bad things. Anyone ever see what happens when bus bars ionize? OUCH. The voltage will acting go across dust and what not in the air and jump from bar to bar. We had a customer at a packing house pop their main 2000 (or 3000) amp breaker. Without checking what went wrong the maintenance super and someone else went to the switchgear and reset the breaker. Luckily they were bent over (the breaker was low) and the top of the switch gear bus bars ionized and blew out the top of the switchgear. If they had been standing up they probably would have been killed. (Talk about customer service: GE actually airfreighted overnight the parts from Seattle to Fresno.)
There's a local Catholic hospital here in Fresno that runs full-time on turbine natural gas generators. They run on 2 in parrallel and rotate the 3rd one in. The get gas from PG&E via a 36" main and still pay like $25K a month for back-up grid power.
__________________
Working for a living is a highly overrated way to spend your time. -MWQ
I can snap more photos if you wish and e-mail them.
He did his link wrong. When you click th elink it shows photo 3 from your photo page. If you want to see his genny, click his camara and then go to #3.
__________________
I have 3 quads and atleast 2 are broken.
Generator Questions?????
