As a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, I’m accustomed to hurricanes, flooding and extreme weather that can knock out power to homes and businesses for weeks, not days. As a result, it’s not uncommon to see portable and standby electric generators in the possession of residents.
In Colorado Springs, however, the purchase and use of these generators is a relatively recent trend. The challenge is new owners are often unfamiliar with the extreme safety risk these generators pose when connected and used improperly.
According to our electric lineworkers, troubleshooters and field service technicians, the use of portable and standby generators has grown exponentially, even before the December 2021 storm that triggered hurricane-force wind gusts and knocked out power to thousands of our customers.
“We’re seeing more and more home generators when we’re out responding to an outage or downed line,” says John Rombeck, electric line specialist. “The concern for us is how some customers are using these generators. An improperly connected generator can cause significant harm to the public and create a potentially fatal backfeed risk to our lineworkers who are trying to restore service or make system repairs.”
In simplest terms, backfeeding is the flow of electricity in the opposite direction than normally intended.
In the case of generators, backfeeding is created when an improperly connected generator is unknowingly feeding electrical current back to nearby electric transformers. In these situations, a lineworker may think an electric line is deenergized for safe repairs, only for a household generator to still be feeding current through the system. This can result in a fatal electric shock for the employee or anyone else in the vicinity of the downed wire.
Unfortunately, the engineered protections we put in place to de-energize lines are not effective in backfeed situations.
“These safety issues are a direct result of people believing that hooking up a generator is a do-it-yourself job – it’s not,” says Rombeck. “For example, custom-splicing electrical plugs onto a generator or trying to wire a generator to your home’s circuit breaker without the help of a trained expert is potentially fatal – for you, your neighbors and our employees.”
Rombeck and organizations like Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI), offer the following important reminders about generator safety.