Can an electrician temporarily connect a generator "incorrectly"?

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PowerSupportElec

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Is it legal for a licensed electrician to connect a generator in what would normally be considered an illegal fashion (no transfer equipment) if it was on a temporary basis during an outage?

While working for large contractors, there were many times that we connected a generator trailer to a building's switchgear with welding cable to temporarily power it. Can this also be done on a residential house? For example, pull the meter and then backfeed a 2 pole breaker with the generator? Or pull the SECs and connect the generator directly to the lugs?
 
That would satisfy part of the requirement.
Exception: Temporary connection of a portable generator without transfer equipment shall be permitted where conditions
of maintenance and supervision ensure that only qualified persons service the installation and where the normal supply is physically isolated by a lockable disconnecting means or by disconnection of the normal supply conductors.
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I think compliance with the text shown in red would be almost impossible for a residential occupancy.
 
don_resqcapt19 said:
That would satisfy part of the requirement.

I think compliance with the text shown in red would be almost impossible for a residential occupancy.
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You could tell the homeowner to watch over the panel and not touch anything the same as you could tell the staff in a commercial setting. Isn't the father and mother of a household the supervisor? :D:thumbsup:
 
don_resqcapt19 said:
That would satisfy part of the requirement.

I think compliance with the text shown in red would be almost impossible for a residential occupancy.
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The only way to be sure would be to pull the meter and take it with you.

PowerSupportElec said:
You could tell the homeowner to watch over the panel and not touch anything the same as you could tell the staff in a commercial setting. Isn't the father and mother of a household the supervisor? :D:thumbsup:
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I have seen to many cases where the children supervised the parents. There is no way I would put that liability on my self at someone home. The first thing to go wrong, guess who they will blame.
 
PowerSupportElec said:
You could tell the homeowner to watch over the panel and not touch anything the same as you could tell the staff in a commercial setting. Isn't the father and mother of a household the supervisor? :D:thumbsup:
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You can do anything you want, if your choices are prudent is another issue.
 
In these cases there always exists the possibility of human error, be it by an electrician or anyone else. Technically speaking, you're not supposed to cut the tag on the meter enclosure and remove the meter (even though I'm sure the vast majority of us have done just that), irrespective of whether you know what you're doing or not. If you're looking for anyone's blessing on this you'll probably not get it. IMHO, the liability is greater than what the job is worth, especially when it comes to a residential application. You can do this 100 times with success but you only have to make a mistake once and you can cause a great deal of damage or injury.
 
goldstar said:
In these cases there always exists the possibility of human error, be it by an electrician or anyone else. Technically speaking, you're not supposed to cut the tag on the meter enclosure and remove the meter (even though I'm sure the vast majority of us have done just that), irrespective of whether you know what you're doing or not. If you're looking for anyone's blessing on this you'll probably not get it. IMHO, the liability is greater than what the job is worth, especially when it comes to a residential application. You can do this 100 times with success but you only have to make a mistake once and you can cause a great deal of damage or injury.
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Cutting the tag on the meter is really up to POCO whether they allow you to do that. It is there primarily for them to be able to detect if anyone has potentially tampered with anything. In certain situations some of them don't care if it is cut, but may want to have one of their representatives inspect it and re-tag it. Others may not have a problem with an electrician cutting it and may even give him a tag to replace with when finished.

I have no problem with tying in a portable generator and have done so many times. Every one of these times I did something to make sure the utility power can not be turned on. My preference is to disconnect conductors somewhere making it impossible to utilize utility power without reconnecting those conductors. Every installation will have differences meaning this is not a one fits all kind of procedure.
 
PowerSupportElec said:
Is it legal for a licensed electrician to connect a generator in what would normally be considered an illegal fashion (no transfer equipment) if it was on a temporary basis during an outage?

While working for large contractors, there were many times that we connected a generator trailer to a building's switchgear with welding cable to temporarily power it. Can this also be done on a residential house? For example, pull the meter and then backfeed a 2 pole breaker with the generator? Or pull the SECs and connect the generator directly to the lugs?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't do that as an advertised service for people you don't know. When that generator runs out of fuel and the local utility restores power (or power is restored and that noisy generator is keeping them awake), those people are going to try anything to get utility power back on and then it's fireworks time or worse.

To answer your question "Is it legal..." I'd say no.

If someone's asking you to do this, tell them they need to buy the ATS. The generator can come and go if they are just renting it (not easy to find a generator at the equipment rental company duing regional outage).
 
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mgookin said:
I wouldn't do that as an advertised service for people you don't know. When that generator runs out of fuel and the local utility restores power (or power is restored and that noisy generator is keeping them awake), those people are going to try anything to get utility power back on and then it's fireworks time or worse.

To answer your question "Is it legal..." I'd say no.

If someone's asking you to do this, tell them they need to buy the ATS. The generator can come and go if they are just renting it (not easy to find a generator at the equipment rental company duing regional outage).
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Exactly why I said I find a way to disable the utility power so it is not a simple flip of a switch to restore utility power. Usually means removing and isolating conductors someplace. If they want to try to put it back the way it was, they are at their own risk, I do tell them I will come back to reconnect it when utility is back on. If they find this to be inconvenient then maybe it is more incentive to have a proper transfer switch installed.
 
Well, the last time I chimed in on this subject in another post, I got sort of flamed for it as being unsafe. But I have thick skin, so here goes-Yes, 702.5 allows this. This is done all the time. Sure, every situation is different and these kinds of things need good professional judgment, competent people, and typically constant supervision while operating. Done this many times over the years, from 10 KW to multi MW, with numerous AHJ's blessings. The real word of many industrial and commercial settings often require set-ups like this from time to time, and in my view this is why 702.5 exist.
 
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