5d ago

Forbidden Tech

104 comments

Sorry, what is "this time of the year"? Suicide September?
- People use them to make their generators power their homes, by adding power into an outlet.
  So, whatever time of year power outages are likely to happen in this area.
  
  Holy shit, does that work?
  I'm only familiar with having a generator properly wired into the house system at the panel, not some electrical Uno Reverse.
  
  yes, it would (possibly) work, but you're likely to run into quite a few safety-related issues outside of using the suicide cord. the fact that you're probably injecting power downstream from any RCD units or even any basic current breakers, leaving you open to electrocution, or worst case, fire. the other issue is if you dont isolate your home from the grid before doing thus, then when the grid comes back (and your generator is still.. generating) there's likly to be a loud bang and a dead generator, let alone the risks you put on any workmen who are working on the lines they are expecting to not be carrying current.
  TLDR; unless your hourse is specifically wired for this, and you have the necessary protections in place, just use an extension cord and plug your fridge directly into the generator. 🤷
  
  I did it last week. We were out of power for about 30 hours. But I actually have a degree in Computer Engineering, and I did it with a friend who is a professional Electrician.
  It is indeed EXTREMELY dangerous. If you don't know what you're doing, or make a mistake, best case scenario, you fry your generator. Worst case, you electrocute a lineman from the power company, who isn't expecting lines to be live when there's an outage, because yes, if you feed power into your house, that will flow OUT of your house onto the main lines (to some extent), if you let it. You could end up trying to power your whole block on your little gas generator.
  We made sure both the indoor and outdoor main power shutoffs for the house were turned off, as well as all breakers. Then we unplugged the oven, and used that for the feed from the generator. Then we gradually re-activated breakers so as not to add too much load to the generator at once. Ultimately, we were able to run the whole house, except for the AC compressor, which the generator actually would have had enough power to run, but not to kick-start.
  The proper way to hook up a generator to feed your house is to install an "inlet" which is both nominatively and physically the opposite of an outlet: instead of holes going into a box, you have prongs sticking out of a box. Generally, it'll be one of the big fat 4-pronged round cables, like what your oven might use. That'll feed down to a large double-breaker, in the top-right slot of your breaker panel. That breaker stays off until you want to run a generator, and, to meet code, you have to also install a special bracket that prevents you from turning this breaker off without turning off the primary feed for the whole house. Still kinda dangerous, but they make those brackets surprisingly foolproof.
  
  except for the AC compressor, which the generator actually would have had enough power to run, but not to kick-start.
  This sentence triggered my PTSD. Imagine, if you will, a world where executives insist that datacenter AC be put on UPS battery. A world where those same executives declare that a different datacenter is just fine running at 95% power capacity because "it's not 100%." A world where inrush current does not exist. Except it does exist, but all professional advice is ignored until there are consequences. And even after such consequences are realized, one of those same executives still tries to run his home sump pump off of a desktop UPS during a power outage, pops it immediately, then goes and gets another from the office, which also pops immediately.
  The sign in OP's post will always be relevant somewhere.
  
  It does, but it's super dangerous to do unless you have it wired up properly. Proper installations will use a special connector so you can't plug anything else into that receptical, and will have it interlocked against the main breaker - you can't plug anything in without disconnecting from the grid. The dangers of doing it amateur-hour are:
  You now have a cable that you can unplug and have live ends exposed - which if you don't realize is connected to an active generator is super dangerous, and even if you do one slip and you are now the ground conductor
  If you connect the generator while still connected to the grid, your generator is almost certainly going to be out of phase. This will probably cause damage to your generator and anything else plugged in at the time
  If you don't have an interlock and run the generator while connected to the grid (say during a power outage) you will be back-feeding power into the grid. This is super dangerous for anyone coming to fix the outage, as things that they've isolated to fix can still end up being live
  Note that this interlock is also required if you have solar - although it's usually in the form of an automatic breaker that will disconnect and put the circuit into "island mode" if it detects a loss of grid supply
  
  If you have to ask, don't do it.
  The proper way to connect a generator is with a breaker panel interlock. This gives you a circuit breaker for the main, grid power; a second breaker for the generator; and an interlock device that only allows one of those two breakers to be active at any given time.
  Trying to use a suicide cable can get power into the house; disconnecting the main breaker would prevent the generator from back feeding the grid. However, the circuit you are plugging the breaker into is only rated to 15 or 20 amps, and you're backfeeding it with a lot more. You can easily overload this circuit without actually blowing a breaker.
  There's other problems as well: your house wiring is designed for two opposing hot, 110v phases. These are combined to provide 220v power to major appliances. Improperly backfeeding your wiring can potentially damage those major appliances.
  You are better off with a nice, heavy-duty extension cord than a half-assed suicide cable.
  
  Lol, not going to do it. Been mildly electrocuted too many times to mess around with something like this.
  More so curious about the physics here, but I see it's basically a roll of the dice that it does work and doesnt just fry everything.
- I'm gonna guess winter, hanging Christmas lights. People string up their lights and then realize far too late that they put two strands with female ends facing each other and instead of restringing they look for a male-to-male cord to bridge the gap.
  A little live wire shouldn't stand in the way of holiday cheer, after all.
  
  That would immediately blow the fuse in the lights and/or start a fire if the two strands were on different circuits that happened to be on different electrical phases.
  While I wouldn't doubt that some people are stupid enough to do that, it's actually summer that it's done the most for because of storms and power outages, and people learn that backfeeding is a thing (that you shouldn't do unless you absolutely know what you're doing).
  
  I appreciate a good "um actually" but this really is about Christmas lights. People really are stupid enough for this to be something posted specifically around December.
  As far as I can tell from a reverse image search this is the original. (Not linking to the other place, DM me if you want the link for some reason).
  
  Fair enough. I shouldn't be posting within 30 minutes of waking up anyway...
  
  Never underestimate stupidity. Though I do think it's at least not normally people trying to connect two strands that are themselves already live. It's normally people who are connecting several strands together and started at the end not plugged in with the male end poking out, not realizing that this means when they're done stringing and go to plug in they've got the female end and no way to plug it in.
  Left facing the daunting task of completely undoing all the work they just did, they try to look for something to bridge the gap without thinking through to the danger.

104 comments