^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Interlock cheaper than a transfer switch. Guess I need to look into those.

My old Federal Pacific Panel is a known fire hazard, so I had it replaced and the electrician installed the receptacle, interlock, and made a cord at the same time. This is the interlock I have:



It’s just the sliding metal plate and three screws. The 50amp receptacle is connect to the 50amp breaker, the neutral bus bar, and ground bus bar. To power the panel from the generator, you turn the main breaker off, slide the metal plate up, and turn the 50amp generator on. With the generator breaker on, the metal plate cannot slide back down and the main breaker cannot be turned on.

The negative is you have to have room for the 50amp breaker and it has to be at the top of the panel, so may have to move some other breakers to make room for it. Price wise, it’s a piece of sheet metal, three screws, and a breaker; $50 for those parts for my panel.

^^^Looks like a 30a breaker to me. Any reason why your electrician used a 30 with a 50a receptacle?

One other point about you guys using portables to provide house backup power, especially those using interlocks. You need to ensure that your generator has a floating neutral. It is easy to check your generator. With the generator unplugged from everything, use your continuity tester to check between a neutral and ground on any plug on the generator. If there is continuity, then your generator is bonded and this bond should be removed prior to connecting to your house (unless you have a transfer switch that transfers the neutral also -rare).

The reverse of this is also true. When using a generator with loads directly connected to it, like with an extension cord, the generator should be bonded to provide a fault path for those directly connect loads.

I have generators that I sometimes use both ways at different times. My solution is to float my generator’s neutral permanently, but I have a plug that bonds the neutral to ground. When I connect the generator to an RV or the house, I remove my jumper plug. When I use the generator stand alone, I plug it into one of the plugs. It is just a $3 cord repair plug that you can buy anywhere with a loop of green wire going from the ground to neutral terminals.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
^^^Looks like a 30a breaker to me. Any reason why your electrician used a 30 with a 50a receptacle?

That’s a picture I grabbed off the internet. I do have a 50amp breaker.

would this one with a 50 amp service do a better job of what I want to do?

I get that I might not be able to run the hvac, water heater, or oven all at the same time but would I be able to run one of the big ones at a time?

ok 50amps is way better than 30amps.
But still the answer is maybe till you give us a bit more detail.
your AC we need to have some idea the size. But a modern unit of modest size is likely near 20amps and may need a little room for startup
your water heater is likely 18ish amps.
your oven is likely 20ish amps.
So on 50 amps assuming the rest of your loads have nothing very big in them then yes you can have one of them and the rest of your house running. But you really, really need to take a minute to read the data plates on these loads. I'm not 100% sure even after these threads where heat comes from? In any case I can say that with 50a available you can find some combination of adjusting what is available at a given time to have a pretty comfortable power outage.

Apphunter

1. yes
2. yes, maybe not an oven with all burners on at the same time, but one at a time should work. The other items one at a time should be ok also along with a few smaller circuits. Need to check amp draw for aux/emergency heat like previous poster mentioned

For your original question to start this thread, it does not work like they seem to say on the web page. The only parallel kits they sell are for 120vac only, either 30 amp or 50 amp total. Also you need to use the same inverter for both units. This may not be possible if you are getting another one later.

An oven to me meant an actual oven. which is a big load. Burners on the other hand are <<individually>> not all that bad. On my range the smallest is 6amps and the largest 13amps. So you can very probably get a couple of burners going as a load. or manage one even with something else big online. But the microwave is your cooking friend in an outage for sure...

My oven has a 3900 watt bake element and 4300 watt broil element which would be OK as only one would work at a time. These are resistance loads, so no starting surge like motor loads.

Apphunter,

Go look at the A/C compressor you are trying to run. Look at the data plate at the LRA value (you may have to remove the outer cover to see it). This is the locked rotor amps required at startup. Any generator you choose will have to meet this value if you wish to run the A/C.

That HF portable's spec sheet says it will do 54a at startup. That is probably sufficient to start up to a 3 or 3.5 ton unit, it will struggle with a 4 or 5 ton unit. Also, the generator's potential output will be reduced on propane or NG.

Note, however, that you could add a soft start that would allow that generator to easily start a much larger unit. I have a 15KW diesel generator that couldn't start my 5 ton compressor. I added the soft start kit, and it now starts it with easy. I added a soft start from Micro Air. Before the soft start, my AC would pull 110A at startup. After the kit was installed, it averages around 43a. The generator barely changes its tone when the A/C cycles with the soft starter installed. As an added bonus, the A/C compressor starts much more gently all the time, even on line power, so the soft start kit provides continuous benefits.

quote:

I will retire from the police department in about 10 years before moving to family land at the coast.

With such a huge time horizon, just bite the bullet and buy a whole house generator with ATS. Ten years of manual testing, is a pain in the ass. Why would you move an old cheap generator, I'd just give away after ten years, then install real one at final point. Plus you will get back 50% minimum on resale value when you move in a decade . This line of thought makes no sense to me. I wouldn't make the same consideration with any other appliances.