Hi all, with the 2019 hurricane season starting I thought it might be interesting to review generator hook ups. There are some real good options and to figure out what system to use I think it comes down to how the electrical service to your house is configured, how much to spend and how much DIY you can do. The convenience of using the backup generator is also a big factor. In my case the house has a main panel outside on the back of the house and a sub panel in the hallway. Some people may want to buy a large generator and run things like the AC or a sump pump that requires 240 volt split phase. In my case all I really want to be able to run are the lights in the house, TV, some fans and the refrigerator. Everything I want to run is powered from the indoor sub panel. Being a solid DIY person I decided to go with the Reliance ProTran 2. By going this route I can leave the outdoor main panel closed (might be raining during the hurricane ;-) and power up what I want from inside the house.
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Small sub panel on a load bearing wall with the only mounting options for the transfer switch was a stacked configuration. The wires that came with the ProTran were long enough but I had to replace the supplied conduit with a longer section to accommodate the stacked config.
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The sub panel was an update to an old house and to get GFCI protected outlets in the bathroom and kitchen a GFCI breaker was used as there was not enough room in the tiny outlet boxes behind tile to fit in GFCI outlets. More on this later.
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The ProTran 2 was designed for use with 240 volt split phase. L1 runs B, D, and F while L2 runs A, C and E
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I made a adapter cord that lets me power half of the ProTran from a 1500 watt power inverter. NOTE! this is only an option if you are not going to power up anything on 240 volts. The breakers are standard Siemens and the dual poll that comes with the ProTran must be changed out for single poll.
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Here is the remote hookup on the back of the house.
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This setup lets me use two different backup power supplies, the 1500 watt power inverter or the 3500 watt generator. As it turns out the inverter will not power up the new refrigerator but it would run the old one. Not sure why as when I tested the refrigerator it did not blow the fast blow 10 amp fuse in my multi meter. 1500 watts is well above 10 amps. Quite disappointed about that but the refrigerator runs fine on the generator. One thing really nice about the ProTran is a circuit can be can be routed around the transfer switch (not hooked up) so a light would come on when the grid comes back up.
Depending on how your house is configured, perhaps an indoor main panel you might want to look into a interlock for the main panel instead as it is less expensive.
Another low cost option would be installing just the outdoor power input box and on the other side of the wall installing a 4 plug outlet box not connected to the house wiring. This would save running extension cords through windows but you would still have to manually plug in anything you want to run. This would only work with small generator with 20 amp max breakers but I'm not comfortable with running cheap house type extension cords on more then 15 amps.
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