First-World Problems...Part Hemeretzi

Woe is me! My little town, which is dotted with gorgeous hardwood trees, lost more than 100 of them because of a recent windstorm. In the process of falling they also knocked down dozens of power and cable lines, which, while not uncommon, was notable because of the number of homes affected.

And what did we lose? Light and air conditioning and refrigeration and powered garage door openers and pool pumps and traffic lights and TV and worst of all...the internet!

This happened a few times in the last tens years or so, and after the second flood of my basement I got a generator to run the sump pumps*. Then of course I wanted to run heat and refrigeration and some lights, so I installed a manual transfer switch, which allowed me to power up to 10 circuits, which is plenty! I also installed a dedicated plug, so I simply roll out the generator from the garage (Yup..I have to lift the door by hand!), plug it into the receptacle, and start it up.

But I did some calculations, and I realized that I could power the entire house if I don't try to run the air conditioners. But that means removing the transfer switch and installing an "interlock," which separates the house from the street power (to prevent sending power back to the street and maybe killing a utility worker) and replaces it with the generator power.

But...can I also power up the air-conditioning system (one of them...not both)? That's the worst part of blackouts during the summer..we are so incredibly lucky to live in America, where air conditioning is just assumed. And none of this 78 degrees crap. The colder the better!

Rated load is 16 amps, and it requires a 30 amp circuit. So assuming the worst, that it pulls 30 amps at startup, that's still only 6,600 watts, which is just below the transient capacity of my generator. But...does it pull more power than that during the few seconds of maximum load, and are the breakers designed to handle more than the rated capacity for brief periods?

This is the agony of 21st century America!

The horror...the horror...

* I recently installed an inverter with two deep-discharge marine batteries to drive one of the sump pumps in case I'm not around when we lose power.

posted by CBD at 02:00 PM

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