Portable Generator Receptacles

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Little Bill

Little Bill

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Tennessee NEC:2017
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Semi-Retired Electrician
A customer has a portable generator that he ordered and they told him it was rated 50A. The genny is only 9500W. which is only 39.58A. I tried to explain to him but I don't think he understands. Something that puzzles me is that it has a 50A receptacle on it. There is a 30A and 50A receptacle side by side with a 30A breaker under each (2 breakers). What would the 50A be for since the genny is not that large?

 
If you had a 50 amp cord you could connect to a 50 amp inlet. The generator output is limited by the 30 amp OCPD so the receptacle size doesn't matter much.
 
Little Bill said:
That's part of what I was trying to explain to the customer, he is limited to 30A.
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You got it correct. I have the opposite setup, 50 amp inlet, 50 amp cord with 50 amp female cord cap, also a 30 amp plug, 30 amp generator receptacle.
 
His problem is he listened to a salesmen! LOL! We had that problem with Home Depot, Generac would have a salesman at the stores telling customers you can run all this stuff. When we would install it, the customer would get mad when we would tell them it was too small for the load they wanted to run. Had one customer that wanted it on there anyway because the Generac salesman said it would run it. Temped the load in, did a transfer, generator shut down on overload. He was pissed at Home Depot.
 
Little Bill said:
A customer has a portable generator that he ordered and they told him it was rated 50A. The genny is only 9500W. which is only 39.58A. I tried to explain to him but I don't think he understands. Something that puzzles me is that it has a 50A receptacle on it. There is a 30A and 50A receptacle side by side with a 30A breaker under each (2 breakers). What would the 50A be for since the genny is not that large?
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Sales tactic.
It fools the unknowing into believing it’s good for 50 amps.
Its amazing to me the people that believe the box store employees and think the electrical professionals are idiots and lying to them..
 
I would have expected a 40A breaker under that 14-50 receptacle. Are any of those breakers a main, or could you pull 30A through one breaker and 10A through another without tripping anything? Still sucks they didn't put a 40A on there.
 
By limiting the load on the 50 amp receptacle to 30 amps that still leaves some room for loads on the other receptacles. I agree it's misleading to the consumer who doesn't know much about electricity.
 
Hv&Lv said:
Sales tactic.
It fools the unknowing into believing it’s good for 50 amps.
Its amazing to me the people that believe the box store employees and think the electrical professionals are idiots and lying to them..
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I've had people call me asking if I will hook up there "whole house" generator only to find out it's just a 30 or 40A. They don't take it so well when I tell them it's not for the whole house. Then there goes the "but the guy @ "gens-r-us" said it would!:p
 
Little Bill said:
I've had people call me asking if I will hook up there "whole house" generator only to find out it's just a 30 or 40A. They don't take it so well when I tell them it's not for the whole house. Then there goes the "but the guy @ "gens-r-us" said it would!:p
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It will indeed run the whole house. Just not everthing that is in the house. :)
 
I usually tell my customers to get at least a 10-11k running watt generator. I then let them know that they can likely run all the 120 volt lights/appliances that they want but they have to apply some common sense with the 240 volt loads, ie running an ac and the dryer at the same time, that kind of thing. Where I live power outtages seldom last longer than 8 hours so installing a true whole house generator at $12-$18,000 makes little sense unless they are elderly or have physical limitations that make using a portable unpractical
 
Phillip Land said:
I usually tell my customers to get at least a 10-11k running watt generator. I then let them know that they can likely run all the 120 volt lights/appliances that they want but they have to apply some common sense with the 240 volt loads, ie running an ac and the dryer at the same time, that kind of thing. Where I live power outtages seldom last longer than 8 hours so installing a true whole house generator at $12-$18,000 makes little sense unless they are elderly or have physical limitations that make using a portable unpractical
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Or like me, just never home when a major event happens that takes out power
 
Welder and RV are two things that come to mind.

The bigger RVs have a 50 amp plug, but unless you are running 2 a/c and every other electric load, you won’t get close to 50 amps. So they don’t have to use an adapter.

Also, a lot of welders just have a 50A plug in them, even the smaller ones, so the shop doesn’t have to install 2 or 3 different receptacles run all the welders.

Still, I only see the too-large-for-the-generator receptacles on the really cheap units.
 
suemarkp said:
I would have expected a 40A breaker under that 14-50 receptacle. Are any of those breakers a main, or could you pull 30A through one breaker and 10A through another without tripping anything? Still sucks they didn't put a 40A on there.
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If this is the Westinghouse WGen, it has a 40A main not shown in the picture. OP can confirm.
 
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