3d ago

Forbidden Tech

102 comments

No idea how and why but my dad once had a cable like that in his workshop.
Short story: we were having a party, bit drunk and wanted power for the bigger speakers, needed an extension, rummaged around and found this one. Of course didn't check the ends, plugged it in and then thought "oh what a weird male adapter there, lets take it...bzzzzt".
Have a tiny burn scar on my hand now, luckily nothing else happened. The cable got dismantled afterwards, but I still don't know why it was there in the first place, he is a pretty good handyman normally.
- If you lose power, you can use one of these cables to power your house (or at least, the part of your house on that phase).
  This is not how you should do this, but it can work. It is not a good idea (possibly illegal?).
  
  In my jurisdiction, backfeeding your house from a receptacle is very illegal. Transfer switches and interlock kits exist for a reason.
  For anyone wondering exactly why it's a bad idea: Power from your generator can, if your house isn't isolated from the grid, travel back into the utility lines and backward through the big transformer at the utility pole (so now it's a few thousand volts again) and give an unsuspecting linesman a nasty surprise. People have died from this. It is a bad idea.
  
  This is also why solar inverters in most countries MUST be able to 'island' (logically disconnect from grid) in order to run a battery.
  We don't have a battery yet, so our inverter shuts down on grid loss. Frustrating as hell when there's an outage on a sunny day, but i get it.
  
  Seems like the power companies should be responsible for either checking there is no back feeding or provide those things for everyone then. (I'm still not advocating for you back feeding your home)
  
  You'd have to constantly test. Just because a lines worker tested that the line is dead five seconds ago doesn't mean some idiot just plugged one of these in.
  They can work, you just need to disconnect your house first then use it. It's also a good way to burn your house down. If something on the same circuit as the generator pulls more current than the wires in the walls are designed to take, because there's no breaker in the way anymore it can catch fire.
  
  You can't check for back feeding.
  Cable coming from house to pole has no power. Electrician goes to hook up wire. Homeowner puts on generator. Electrician gets electrocuted.
  Yes the testing and hooking up could be a small window of time but a fraction of a second after testing is all it takes.

102 comments