generators
weather is a bitch. mother nature does not care about us. is it the hubris of man to think we can tame her?
it hasn’t rained in LA in like 250+ days or something crazy like that. it’s bone dry. it’s warm. last week, everything started burning. altadena and pacific palisades are literally in ashes.
the power companies down here are scared. our power has been off for a long time, it will probably keep happening all year. so, i guess we’re getting a generator because, apart from the air being smoke, inside our house is fine if we can keep it running to keep the air clean. and to do that, we need power.
it’s really kind of interesting how suddenly me and all my neighbors are interested in off-grid living, even though we’re in los angeles. it’s also interesting how simple home electrical is… also pretty scary.
like, i understand why there are so many “codes” and laws around what you can do with electrical, because, without them, it is tremendously easy to do something stupid. i feel like i learned so much about this stuff this week.
can you plug an emergency backup battery into your outlet?
i googled that, and thus began my journey.
with that question specifically, it was full of answers like “no, don’t be an idiot”. but nobody really explained why.
and the reason why is that, it’s dangerous if it backfeeds into the grid while linemen are working on the power lines. but if you cut off from the grid?
well… the answer changes, kinda 🤷
there’s still a good reason to not do that, and that’s because you are probably plugged into a circuit with a 15amp breaker, so you’re limited to just 15amps for anything else in your circuit breaker, and that’s just not enough. but what if you had a bigger breaker?
apparently that’s all they do when they install a “mantual transfer switch” for a generator inlet circuit. we had a 50amp breaker installed so we could plug our 50amp generator into our panel.
the only thing really keeping it safe is a sliding doohickey that ensures either the grid breaker is closed or the generator is closed, but not both.
the more you know.