Hurricane power trick?

[Captned]

I just got off the phone with a friend of mine that has a house on a canal in West Palm Beach. He doesn’t have any power but his boat has a 12kw generator. So this is what he told me he did. He jumped his sliding shore/generator switch with 8 gauge wire and crimp connectors so that his generator is feeding power back through his boats power cable to his power pedestal on his dock and then back to his house. He also turned off the main feed from the power company so he would not back feed into their system. He says all his 120 volt house hold stuff works just like normal and he doesn’t have to run extension cords everywhere. Light switches, dishwasher, etc…..He says he hasn’t blown any breakers and nothing seems to be getting hot. Hmmmm… Problems? Or does he have something here?

[jim rosenthal]

We did something like this but just ran a cable up from the boat. Of course we could only use a little of the power of the genset.I think if I lived in FL or the Gulf Coast, I would want a standby for the house. I have one up here in MD but only 8.5kw. I've used it a few times. The temporary setup he has is as good as he wired it. Good that he disconnected the house from the mains- someone up on a utility pole could get a big surprise.

[Genesis]

Works perfectly well.

I was seriously considering doing exactly that after Ivan if the power had stayed off here, but with a LOT of cable :D

No particular problem with it, and as long as he keeps it loaded reasonably all is fine.

One note - TAG OFF AND LOCK THE MAIN BREAKER BOX SO THERE IS NO WAY FOR THAT BREAKER TO BE CLOSED!

IF someone opens that up and closes the mains before power is restored someone (like a power company lineman) may be killed. If it happens AFTER power is restored it is very likely to DESTROY his genset.

[Pascal]

it should work as long as the wiring from the power pedestal to the house is adequate... but as genesis said, i would make sure nobody can reset the main feed. big tag, duct tape, etc... whatever it takes.

[Genesis]

50 amps is 50 amps; direction of current flow does not matter. At 240V that's about 10kw of power. If you try to pull more you'll pop the pedestal breaker.

But 10kw is actually quite a lot. You can even start and run a HOME AC unit in many cases off that, plus the refer and a few lights. Just don't go nuts and try to treat it as "full power", because its not.

Note that on my boat to do this you'd have to remove the crossconnect prevention bar on the AC inlet panel so you can close both sets of breakers.

The important thing to remember with rigging things like this is to think long and hard about how you can manage to kill someone (including yourself) or do horiffic damage to your stuff (including the boat) if something goes wrong, and then prevent those things from happening BEFORE you undertake this sort of thing.