GENERATOR HOOKUP SCENARIOS

If you've got a portable generator and you want to use it to power things in your home during an outage

you're going to have to make some kind of connection between the generator and your house

And this first of the three legal methods that I'm going to tell you about here is really pretty simple

It does have some drawbacks, though. So imagine for a moment that a power failure sets in

you can simply grab some ordinary extension cords, plug them into the regular outlets on the generator

and fish those extension cords into your home and plug things in that you can plug into cords

Not everything can be plugged in, of course, because many items are hardwired into your home

And that's one of the drawbacks of this method. Another drawback is limited output

I mean, here you can see we only have two outlets for two extension cords. Now one way around this problem is to get a dedicated generator extension cord, essentially

So it plugs into one of the larger outlets, this one you see here, and at the other end it has multiple female outlets

So three is pretty typical. So you really get three taps off the electricity for one plug outlet

And it's a reasonable way. It's a reasonable option, but far from ideal

So why do I say that? Well, even with the best extension cords you can get plugged into a generator

you'll find that how many things can you plug into it? That's really the limiting factor

And even when they're all connected, you're going to fail to make use of all the wattage output that your generator can produce

big portable generators can put out 9,000, 10,000, 12,000 watts, and there's no way you can use all of that with extension cords

It's kind of like trying to pour a lot of water from a big bucket into a funnel with a small opening

It's just not all going to go through. So to sum up, this is an easy method

It doesn't require very much preparation ahead of time, but there's some serious drawbacks

And if you've got a big portable generator, there are better ways to connect that unit to your home than extension cords

The second method of legally connecting a generator to your home uses something called a transfer switch and panel

And it's a lot better than extension cords because it lets you power things that are hardwired in your home

and it lets you make full use of your generator capacity So to make the transfer switch method work you going to need to have some hardware professionally installed And the first thing is what you see down here and that is an outdoor connection port

So this is something that will allow you to plug in a cable that connects the port and your electrical system to your generator

The second thing that needs to be installed is the actual. transfer panel. And that's what you see here. So part of the installation process involves

identifying essential circuits that you want powered during an outage. A portable generator

probably can't power all the circuits in your home, but it doesn't really need to. You'll

want to power things like a water pump, some outlets, some lights, maybe a furnace circuit

things like that. So all of the essentials would be really, located during installation from the main panel to this transfer panel. And with that in place

you're all set and ready to go in the event of an outage. So when things go black

you're all set to do two things to get your generator powering your home with this transfer

switch situation. The first thing you need to do is to connect the generator and the outdoor port

with a special cable that's meant to do this. It can handle all the power the generator puts out

and it has the appropriate ends, first on the generator side and then the port side

so that it can all connect together and then you start up the generator

Now, at this stage, you still won't have any power in your house

and that's because of this thing here, the actual transfer switch. That switch connects either the green

to your home circuits or the generator to your home circuits, but never both at the same time

That's why legalities matter so much in this regard. If your generator were able to connect to the grid, it could feed power back into the power lines here

and that would endanger line workers who aren't expecting power to come from people's home generators

when they're working to restore power. So at this stage your generator is running, it's plugged in, but you still don't have any power to your home

For that, you need to actually manually flip the switch over, like you see here

This switch is now in generator mode, which means that none of the power can back feed through into the main panel and subsequently through your meter base into the lines

The only power involved is coming from the generator cable through the conductors in this conduit and then into the panel here where it is distributed to the circuits that have been identified ahead of time So that the way this works and

when the power is restored you start by switching this switch back off again, back to the grid position and

then you shut off the generator and you remove the cable and the the the the

door here, the weatherproof door is closed, and everything's sitting, waiting for the next

outage for you to connect your generator and get things working again. The third legal method for

connecting your generator to your house uses a piece of hardware called a JennerLink, as far as I

know, it's the only thing of its kind out there, and it actually requires the least modification

to your home electrical system. It's not a perfect system, though. There are some drawbacks, as I'll explain

but essentially the gener link unit is a cylinder that fits between your meter and your meter base

Now, the cost of this unit is going to be more than the cost of a transfer switch and panel

that I discussed previously. but the installation costs are very low. It doesn't take an electrician very long to install one of these

So on balance, I think the generlink is probably going to be about the same amount of money

as the transfer switch option. And here's how it works. The generlink does a couple of things

First, right down here, there's a port that will accept a cable

that connects the generator to the gender link. And you'll see that happening in a minute

that connection happening in a minute. Now also inside this cylinder, there are some pretty sophisticated things going on

The first of which is that the system can recognize whether the grid power is on or off

When the grid power is on, you're free to hook up the generator with the cable

and start up the engine. But if the grid power's on, the generlink's not going to let power get past

this point right about here. It's not going to go to your house, and it's definitely not going to back feed through the electrical grid, which is the main concern

That's the main idea behind all of these safe, legal connection methods

So when the power goes out, you've got to do two things if you have a genera link system

The first thing is to connect the generator to the genera link with a cable Now this cable is quite a bit like the one that was used with the transfer switch system except in this case this end of the cable is proprietary

It's specially made to connect with the generlink. The company provides these cables

They're available for connecting to all different kinds of generators, and they come in different lengths too

Now, when that cable connection is made and the grid power is off

and you fire up the engine of your generator, of your generator, you're going to get full generator power delivered to your home

And that's a good thing, but that may not be, probably won't be, all of the things you want

to do. Because as it stands now, the generator is going to be trying to feed power to all

the circuits in your house. And as I mentioned previously, even a large portable generator

probably can't power everything you've got going. So the second thing that you need to do

is to go to your electrical panel and switch some of the breakers off for circuits that you can do without

So an electric water heater, for instance, it uses a lot of power and you can probably live for some time without hot water or without generating new hot water because you still will have hot water stored in your hot water tank

Other things like an electric clothes dryer. It's not operating all the time, but you might as well switch it off so that nobody in the house turns it on by mistake and overloads

the system. Now, if an overload should happen, that's not that big of a deal because every generator

has a built-in breaker that's going to protect the generator from trying to produce more power

than it safely can. So if you overload the system, all that's going to happen is that you have to go

and reset the breaker on the generator. With things the way they are now, as you see them

this system can continue to power your home indefinitely. And when the power

comes back on again, you just simply disconnect everything. You shut the generator off

you remove the cable, and you return the breakers in the panel to their former position

and it's business as usual until you get another power failure. Now, there's one other thing I need

to mention about this option. Not all jurisdictions in the world have approved the JennerLink

to be installed. They haven't all gone. around to studying it and accepting the existing approval. So before you go out and buy

anything, you should contact your local electrical authority. Just see if they

permit this kind of hardware, the genre link, to be installed. And if they do, then

you're good to go. If they don't, then really that your best option is some sort of

a transfer switch and panel arrangement