Worst Electrical Mistake You Can Make - Backfeeding Generators

Thanks for watching please LIKE & SUBSCRIBE - Electric safety isn't exciting but neither is dying so please pay attention. Safe Generator Plug: amzn.to/36azVKo

Gotta be honest, I did this in 2007 during the massive ice storm that hit the Pacific Northwest. We were out of power for over a week that time. The storm actually knocked down one of the high voltage towers that comes into town, so the power outage was expected to be prolonged. Some areas didn't get it back for 12 days. That said, I did throw my main, and actually disconnected some circuits inside my panel so I could power some 240 directly like my well pump. Water was cold, but at least it was running. Local public power was super cool about it when they started coming around to reconnect lines. They did a house to house inspecting panels because they knew people had done what they needed to. They actually quickly rewired the few things I had modified. Now I have a proper generator panel in the works. As much as I know how to do it safely, I don't ever want to have to do it again.

I used to remove trees from power lines and this was one of the biggest dangers. One time I was dragging some branches and noticed that the dead line was still sparking, turned out that the local police had hooked a generator up to traffic light but didn't disconnect it from the grid. When this happens the voltage gets stepped up to the full distribution voltage.

This happened in my city, there is a meat market with a backup generator and some utility workers had to repair an underground power line nearby, they shut down power in the area after notifying everyone and someone in the meat market turned on the generator but forgot to disconnect it from the main power line, well when they went to fix the line two workers were in the trench they dug to get to the line and one died instantly and the other died later in the hospital.

I'm a line clearance tree trimmer and, while not from my yard, we've lost a few guys to backfeed. It's a series topic, glad to see good video addressing it.

There is another risk with back feeding that you didn’t cover, which is reversed polarity. When I was a teenager, I was building a log cabin in the woods, and while I had help from others for heavy stuff like the roof, and complicated stuff like the kitchen cabinets, I was on my own for the electrical wiring. To make my life easier during construction (before the cabin got hooked to the electric grid) I ran a double-male-ended extension cord from my parents’ trailer to one of the outlets in the cabin, and from there it went into the service panel and to the rest of the cabin, allowing me to turn on lights and run power tools. Pretty much immediately after I plugged it it, I noticed I was getting shocks whenever I touched ground screws. That puzzled me, so I got a volt meter and saw 120v between neutral and ground, which made no sense to me at all. So I walked back to the trailer to investigate, and as soon as I opened the door I saw smoke coming from the outlet with the extension cord plugged in. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and unplugged the cord, extinguished the fire, and investigated, and this is what had happened: the trailer, built in 1970, used aluminum wiring, and that particular outlet had been wired backwards (in other words, despite being a grounded outlet, the hot and neutral wires were reversed). So, hot from the trailer’s service panel was going to the neutral on the outlet, the neutral on the extension cord, and (since I’d done my wiring correctly) the neutral bus bar on the cabin service panel, which was bonded to the ground bus bar, which was grounded by a ground rod right outside. The distance from the trailer service panel ground rod to the cabin service panel ground rod was roughly 200 feet (60m) so there was enough resistance that the breaker wasn’t tripping, but the oxidized aluminum wiring in the trailer outlet was none the less overheating, and had I checked 2 minutes later I likely wouldn’t have been able to stop the fire. Ever since then I never trust unknown wiring to be correct, and I always check polarization before I plug in anything that might care about polarity. I have a handy little plug-in circuit tester, shows open neutral, open ground, open hot, and reversed polarity, perfect for a quick reassurance that all is as it should be.

When I was a kid, we lived in an area where power outages were frequent. When our house was built, my parents had a hardwired cord for a generator put in with an interlock. The generator wasn't anywhere near powerful enough to run the whole house, so we had essential circuits (Well pump, refrigerator, etc.) marked with some whiteout on the breaker handles. I have many memories of being on "Generator and breaker duty".

Thank you. I was actually pondering over this kind of thing and wondering how I could keep the electricity from going out of the home's circuits. Even though it is a BASIC premiss, I didn't think about shutting down the main breaker. It makes total sense now, but it just didn't occur to me as I was casually mulling it over in my mind. I'm going to get one of those Interlocks and get prepared for the frequent outages at our new home. THANKS AGAIN!!!

Often it is necessary to specify that something is illegal BECAUSE it is unsafe, in that regard thank you for elaborating the indirect hazards. Having worked at a hardware store it was in our training video that the most common desire for these stupid cords is when someone put their Christmas lights up in the wrong direction. In Virginia and hopefully every other state it is illegal to help someone make one of these things. I have no idea how any company is getting away with selling them.

Thank you for this. I work in the trades and am pretty handy guy & I don't like messing with electricity. Back when I was a young man I worked as a paramedic and in 15 years I saw more than a few DIYers electrocute themselves. This may not be exciting but it is necessary knowledge.

I have an interlock for my generator. It was maybe $150 in parts and took my Father and I only an hour or so to put in. My Father is a licensed electrician. It really is the cheapest way to safely hook a generator to your house.

We had a 30amp breaker wired to ours, and we would install it in the main box when the power went out. With this setup, after killing the main breaker, we could power one bus bar at a time, but with a smaller generator and a basic breaker, we could run the lights and fridge, water pump (no hot water though) and such, while using kerosene heaters in winter when the power was most likely to go out from ice and snow/wind causing treefalls. We simply made 100% sure to always kill the mains before throwing the switch from the genset.

They can be used as a way to test your system prior to having the main power hooked up as well. Some just talk about the back feeding during an outage but never mention that when you run new lines or update current lines this is a way to do a quick test to see if things are all connected properly prior to having the main electric feed turned on. Also if the main power is not turned on this is a way to have a temporary electric feed for your power tools as you make other repairs.

Something that took me a while to understand is that when you backfeed your panel and power goes out onto your house service, you're not just sending out 120v or 240v. As soon as your power hits the transformer that powers your house that voltage is stepped up to thousands of volts. That's important when you don't have power because the primary voltage line that feeds your transformer is broken and laying across your neighbor's metal fence.

One of the weirdest dreams I had as a child was one where I saw a backfeeding cable like that, albeit fitted with Type G plugs instead of the Type B plugs you showed as I grew up living in Singapore. This video finally helped me decode and put that strange dream to rest! (YouTube recommended this video to me)

Wow, totally awed. The island got hit pretty hard by Fiona and I used this method for the 2 weeks we were without power. Yup, I used that same cord for 2 weeks straight. I shut down the main power and all the fuses in the electrical box except for the kitchen and living room one. Didn’t need to run the whole house just needed the fridge, a fan and power for charging phone, ipad and fan. Now watching this video has me scared to do it again even though I never had an issue using this type of cable with my inverter generator. Thanks for the info.

I used to work for Lowes. A customer asked me if we carried these cables and I said we don't because they are illegal. Two weeks later he was in the store. He told me he made his own cable and used it to connect his generator to his house. When the mains power came back on, it shorted out his main panel and set his house on fire. His insurance refused to cover the damage because he used an illegal item to power his house.

Quite awhile ago I had to hook up my generator safely to my home while safeguarding against backfeeding rather than running a heavy extension cord to critical devices. Long story short. I designed a mechanical interlock that looked essentially the same as what is shown in this video. I was ready to fabricate it which wasn’t a big project. Right about that time, while looking up some electrical supplies to purchase, I came across this very same interlock, patented, and offered in various configurations depending on the panel make. It looked exactly the same but prettier! Damn! A great idea too late. I shared my story with the interlock company and they replied that they get the same emails from others who have had the same situation. Har!

many years ago, my dad set up the house to be backfed by a generator, but the solution he used was even worse than a double-male cable. He installed a cable with a male end and a permanently-wired end. It's energized any time we have grid power. When we aren't using a generator, the male end is kept in a locking receptacle which is installed but not wired to anything -- to give some degree of safety. Creating a safe installation would've required digging a trench to run an underground cable. At the time my dad set up the generator, we probably could've afforded to do that. By the time I was old enough to realize the setup was a major problem, that wasn't the case anymore. We wouldn't exactly die overnight without power, but with how long and frequent power outages are here, we would experience significant hardship if we dismantled the setup. Being able to fix this became farther off when my dad left the family and thus wasn't helping pay for things, and work-from-home means that our livelihood has become dependent on the generator. A family member has recently started dating a contractor who has been very willing to help with other issues, so I'm hoping we might be closer to getting a safe setup. This video has also reminded me to try again to find ways to get out of the need for the underground cable -- since that's the primary barrier.

Thanks for sharing this, you seem to really care about the well being and safety of your viewers