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Could It Be This Easy?? Generator Bonding Plug - Nope!

PaulGrun

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For those who understand electronics... the act of opening the Neutral-Ground bond is quite simple. For those who have the green screw that bonds the neutral to the ground in your breaker panel, removing that will get you where you need to be. But at the end of the day the emotional hype about whether you can open the neutral-ground bond is just that. Ford knows exactly how to do this, some of their vehicles are set up as floating neutrals. They could at least be courteous and tell us where it is and if it requires major opening up of something, just say so. Ford's silence is deafening.
These threads are chock full of people giving lots of advice...frankly much of it ranges from suspect to bad.
Gros Ventre suggests "unbonding" the neutral from the ground at the truck. This certainly solves the problem of tripping the truck's GFCIs, but what he seems to be missing is this: Once you "unbond" the neutral from the ground in the truck, you have effectively changed the character of the generator/inverter.
The generator/inverter is intended to be used as a portable generator to power things like tools and to meet jobsite needs. That is the reason why Ford opted to bond the ground and the neutral at the inverter and is also the reason why the outlets are GFCI protected. If you unbond the ground and neutral, you no longer have a safe portable generator for use as intended by Ford. True, you could "rebond" the neutral and ground after the power outage, but it would require you, the owner, to remember to do that.
If you "unbond" the ground and the neutral as Gros Ventre suggests, you would also have to "rebond" it after you were done powering your house during a power outage. Otherwise, you would be working with an unsafe generator in your truck.
It seems to me that the reason Ford doesn't do what Gros Ventre wants them to do is that there is no practical way to switch between bonded and unbonded automatically, based on usage. The truck's generator/inverter is either bonded, or unbonded ... you can't have it both ways. If I were Ford, I'd be ignoring his request too.
Again, it boils down to the intended usage: It is a portable generator; it is not intended as a whole house power source.
The electrial conundrum is simple: a portable power generator required both to bond the ground and the neutral and to supply GFCI protected outlets.
]Plugging the generator into your house, absent any other changes, effectively means that the neutral and the ground are bonded in two places (in the house and in the truck) which induces a small current in the ground sufficient to trip the GFCIs in the truck. Short of a transfer switch, I don't see any other safe, legal way to go.
Hammaman (?) suggests removing the ground wire from the cord used to connect the truck to the house panel. That probably works, but it is most definitely on the shady side of the code as Hullman and others have pointed out. Personally, I would not do that because I have no appetite for negotiating with an insurance company that discovers you've done that. And it still requires a way to disconnect your panel from the utility during the duration of the outage.
Bottom line, the PB isn't intended as a Generac replacement, but it is more than capable of powering certain key appliances in your house during an outage.
 

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Gros Ventre

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These threads are chock full of people giving lots of advice...frankly much of it ranges from suspect to bad.
Gros Ventre suggests "unbonding" the neutral from the ground at the truck. This certainly solves the problem of tripping the truck's GFCIs, but what he seems to be missing is this: Once you "unbond" the neutral from the ground in the truck, you have effectively changed the character of the generator/inverter.
The generator/inverter is intended to be used as a portable generator to power things like tools and to meet jobsite needs. That is the reason why Ford opted to bond the ground and the neutral at the inverter and is also the reason why the outlets are GFCI protected. If you unbond the ground and neutral, you no longer have a safe portable generator for use as intended by Ford. True, you could "rebond" the neutral and ground after the power outage, but it would require you, the owner, to remember to do that.
If you "unbond" the ground and the neutral as Gros Ventre suggests, you would also have to "rebond" it after you were done powering your house during a power outage. Otherwise, you would be working with an unsafe generator in your truck.
It seems to me that the reason Ford doesn't do what Gros Ventre wants them to do is that there is no practical way to switch between bonded and unbonded automatically, based on usage. The truck's generator/inverter is either bonded, or unbonded ... you can't have it both ways. If I were Ford, I'd be ignoring his request too.
Again, it boils down to the intended usage: It is a portable generator; it is not intended as a whole house power source.
The electrial conundrum is simple: a portable power generator required both to bond the ground and the neutral and to supply GFCI protected outlets.
]Plugging the generator into your house, absent any other changes, effectively means that the neutral and the ground are bonded in two places (in the house and in the truck) which induces a small current in the ground sufficient to trip the GFCIs in the truck. Short of a transfer switch, I don't see any other safe, legal way to go.
Hammaman (?) suggests removing the ground wire from the cord used to connect the truck to the house panel. That probably works, but it is most definitely on the shady side of the code as Hullman and others have pointed out. Personally, I would not do that because I have no appetite for negotiating with an insurance company that discovers you've done that. And it still requires a way to disconnect your panel from the utility during the duration of the outage.
Bottom line, the PB isn't intended as a Generac replacement, but it is more than capable of powering certain key appliances in your house during an outage.
Ah-h-h but you can have it both ways. Commonly the bonding is a wire that is screwed down. You "unscrew" that wire and voila... then when you decide to be a jobsite generator, voila you "screw" it down again... this is easy to do on most generators. Thank you for your soliloquy... and your seeming sophistry will certainly influence those with lesser understanding of electricity than yours. Bottom line is the bonded neutral in the Powerboost generator is not required by the National Electric Code. Oh, come on...
 

PaulGrun

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Ah-h-h but you can have it both ways. Commonly the bonding is a wire that is screwed down. You "unscrew" that wire and voila... then when you decide to be a jobsite generator, voila you "screw" it down again... this is easy to do on most generators. Thank you for your soliloquy... and your seeming sophistry will certainly influence those with lesser understanding of electricity than yours. Bottom line is the bonded neutral in the Powerboost generator is not required by the National Electric Code. Oh, come on...
Correct!
As long as YOU, the owner can remember to bond and unbond the generator/inverter, and you do so faithfully, always, everytime you change the truck from "Generac mode" to "portable generator mode".
And let me point out that if you fail to re-bond the ground and the neutral when you want to return the generator/inverter to portable generator mode, you will not know you forgot to do so until you've had a (potentially) serious, possibly deadly, electrical failure because the safeguards built into modern generators (bonding, GFCIs) are no longer functional.
My point is that it depends on the owner to remember to make sure that the generator/inverter is operating safely in both modes. If I were Ford's liability lawyers, there is no way on God's green earth that I would accept that.
The risk, IMHO, is in people who don't understand electricity following your advice but without a clear understanding of the electrical implications. Which are not straight forward.
My objective when writing my post was EXACTLY to influence people who don't understand the situation and to dissuade them from following (the seemingly simple) advice that you are offering. What you are advocating is dangerous. Period.
Oh, and thank you for your .25 cent words ("soliloquay, sophistry"). Most impressive. And by the way, "sophistry" doesn't mean what you may think it means. There was nothing fallacious in my post, nor was there any intent to deceive. There was, however, an intent to warn. Quite different.
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