Grid tied inverter driven directly from generator

[msdmaule]

Come on now you guys work for the monopoly / power utility company or what, I personal know the president of our local power co.,I inquired with him about what I was planing to do heres what he said .Well we still have the cost to maintain the wires.This is there way of thinking, just because you have something someone else has to use it where is the free market.This why we got an 85% increase in our rates last year,I have an excavation business if I sent out a new price list with an 85% increase I might as well close the doors because no one will use my service. Also just as my friend said we still have to maintain the wires, SO WHAT I have 6 pieces of heavy equipment does that mean people HAVE to use/ pay me  . The problem with the utility is they are only one set of wires going by your house .The way the utility's got away from the monopoly thing in our area was they separated the generator from the wire, thus had to leave a loop hole for net metering.The power company told me, we come out to your place and change your meter and thats it you deal with the rest. As for the line men I have 4 close friends who work for the power company plus have watched them and talked to them fix and install wires on our jobs they ALWAYS check for power back feeds and no line guy our area ever touches the wire without safety equipment. I am looking for a way to beak the monopoly and you are ether part of the problem or part of the solution so come on men lets find a way out of this monopoly strangle hold. thanks               

[lowspeedlife]

No one here is saying you can't net meter, you can. you just have to do it correctly. plugging your gen set into your house panel & back feeding the grid will work but someone will eventualy die & you will at worst go to prison, at best you will pay a lot more cash than you can save to defend yourself in court. by all means connect to the grid, but do it right. most guys here are doing what they do to get around having to pay the monopoly, but they don't want to kill some poor slob just trying to feed his family. & yes they check for voltage on the system before they start working on the lines, but say he's already working on it when you fire up our system, one fried lineworker.



             scott r

[LowGear]

Obi-Wan:

You are so right!  We, at least four of us are totally servants of The Man at the utility company and you are the free and enlightened one.  Have a great life.

Oh, your friend is right.  Their responsibility starts at the meter interface just as yours does only in the opposite direction.  But you already knew that along with the rest of life, the universe and everything.

Good bye!

Casey

[lowspeedlife]

"Obi-Wan"  LOL, you funny Casey,

[msdmaule]

Sleep easy my net metering paper work was in  the mail as of yesterday morning .I never advocated on doing anything illegal just wanted some info as to anyone how one might of done this before as many people have, I have read that you have to sqence in with the utlity generators with your generator this proves this not to be true  . As killing any line man have you ever watched or talked to the utility guys working on the line. They always isolate the circuit or pull the fuses on top of the poles between where they are working this isolates the work area, a safe guard. No body goes near high voltage wires with out protection. The wires on the poles are high voltage and must go throug a step down transformer to get to in my case to 220 volt. Anyway can any one tell me how people get off the grid with a gen set when the power goes out or does it just pop the beaker then you shut down main power and use your own power.     

[Jim Mc]

...No body goes near high voltage wires with out protection....

Uh, OK.  Good luck explaining that to the jury, or the family of the electrocuted utility worker.

Anyway can any one tell me how people get off the grid with a gen set when the power goes out or does it just pop the beaker then you shut down main power and use your own power.     

EXCELLENT question.  And it indicates how much you need to learn about grid-tie connections.  In a net-metering setup, the power from your generator (or inverter) must flow through a safety interconnect system, which prevents the power from flowing into an otherwise unenergized utility grid.

[lowspeedlife]

Yes I have seen them work on the grid. I have actually done some myself. no they do not pull all the fuses on a line to work on the lines, they may pull the fuses where they are, but there could be hundreds of fuses on that line, that could take days to pull & replace. If they are working on a maintenance situation yes they do all that, if they are working an emergency power outage they may not.  nobody here wants to stop you from feeding the grid, they just want you to understand that done incorrectly it is dangerous. You say you don't advocate doing anything illegal, but you said you tied your 3500 watt generator into the system without safties & shutdowns, & without speaking to the engineer at the utility, that's illegal, no doubt about it. the people  here are "do-it-yourselfers", they take pride in that & when someone does something crazy it makes the rest of us look bad too. there have been many times on the forum where we have chastized people for running big flywheel slow speed engines past thier rated speed, that too is dangerous (cast iron will explode if spun too fast, like a bomb, with similar results).       

when your system is tied to the grid & the grid goes down so will your system, in order to power your house, with the grid down, you will have to have a bypass designed into your grid tie to allow this, keeping your system isolated from the grid, while the grid is down.

   good luck & be safe


  Scott R.

[msdmaule]

I don't know you all are from and hate to generalize but all utility's have adopted the lock out tag out program listed in OSHA ,electrical NFPA standard found in CFR 1910.147 google and read. Hey you guys are tough crowd!!!   

[LowGear]

Damn, wish I hadn't said goodbye.

But goodbye is goodbye.

(up line fuses - YES!, down line fuses - Maybe)  Ok, I cheat a little too when there are no consequeces.  Electricution is the ultimate.  Cuts, electrical burns and falling twelve feet can ruin your day as well.

LowGear

[SteveU.]

Wow. I've been sitting here in stunned silence until that last msdmaule post.
We are East coast US, upper Midwest US, Pacific coast US, Pacific Coast Canada, and Mid Pacific (ocean) US.
So quite a conspiracy, eh?
What we do have in common is that earlier in our lives when someone has told us "Watch out!", "Better look before you leap!" , we did. The fella' next to us who didn't ain't here anymore. Dead and gone, in prison or in a wheel chair. But of course they were all smarter than us too. They were one of those, "I'd rather be lucky than good!", people too.

When one of my trees drops a snow or ice covered limb onto the lines and snaps a wire the line workers come out and disconnect and lock out the lines 1/2 mile one way and about 2 miles up the other way. Still leaves about eight houses in that isolated grid segment. Then if they follow that procedure you listed they even ground out the lines on each side of the break cause they know any one of those eight houses with a home generator can fry their ass. If their grounding poles light up they stop, call the cops and then they all follow the noise to its source. I"ve already told you the rest of that story.

Your neighbors are really going to love you for the entertainment you are going to provide them.
As for me, I've seen too many people hurt stupidly.

Good by Sir
SteveU.

[lowspeedlife]

I'm done, do what you want, just done come cyrin' round here when it goes bad. Oh wait, you can't type with hand cuffs on. bye!

[LowGear]

Hello Msdmaule,

I'm almost done.  Not to digress too much but from what I gather it is impossible to grid-tie a "stand alone" generator set and get a valid synchronization with the utility.  I believe that there is always a utility engineering review of your proposed system and I have not heard of one yet that did not involve an approved inverter with a price tag that started around $2000 not to forget the costs of AC to DC back to synced AC.

Obviously, from the posts to this thread alone, there are many of us that agree with this review process but I also want a disinterested third party review as well.  The government plan review and inspection program is good enough for me.  I live in a state where much of this process is turned over to the design licensed engineer and I hear one near horror story every month or two and I’m not in the business.  One vested interest if not arrogant decision after another seems to be the theme.

As an American I say “Don’t let them tread on us!” but as a rational adult I urge you to work within the rules and regulations that make us all so very safe in our homes and our work places even if that be 27 feet up a utility pole or slogging around downed wires in wet boots.

Best wishes,

Casey

[AdeV73]

There are some rules in life which are stupid, e.g. having to wear a hi-vis jacket indoors if you're a plumber. e.g. needing a certificate to prove you can climb a ladder without falling off it, even if you're only working 4ft off the ground in an office building. Elfin Safety has gone berserk in recent years, to the point you can barely breath without needing a government qualification - but hey, that's another rant entirely.

Then, there are some rules in life which are plain evil, e.g. having to do an accurate tax return.

And finally, there are some rules in life which are genuinely there to protect others from your actions; and you from others actions. Many of the electricity safety procedures fall into this category. Despite these rules, the electricity industry electrocutes - or burns to death - hundreds of people every year.

Consider this: Your generator may be throwing 120 (or 208, or 240, or 400) volts AC back up the line. 120 or 240 is unlikely to kill anyone (it might if they're 20ft up a ladder at the time; but that's not the point). However, transformers work backwards pretty much as well as they work forwards; so if you're feeding 40 amps of 120vac into the now-dead grid, the line transformer at the end of your street is going to scale that up to a few KV; 11KV springs to mind. That's going to do someone a nasty injury.

[holtonrb]

Gentlemen.
It appears that all but one of us here are in agreement: If we are going to mess with marrying home generated electricity to the power grid we need to do it right.  But could we please bring this back to the original topic, that being: How do we lister owners do it right?  If this thread has matured to the point that the original question is no longer relevent to currnet context of thread please excuse me.
Randy

[Tugger]

This link gives you some of the basic ideas for a system...
Its for solar and wind systems..the only systems approved in Ontario that i know of...
Apparently they dont consider a lister running as enviromentaly friendly....

http://www.esasafe.com/pdf/Micro_Embedded_Generation_Facilities_Guidelines.pdf

Cheers
Tug
ps ...see  you guys in a week....try not to wreck the place while im gone..
<sings> Viva las vegas......viva las vegas.....thank ya...thank ya very mush...