Posted: 12/4/2012 2:58:52 AM EDT
| Has anyone installed the grounding wire on these HF generators ? |
| I put a ground wire jack on my Champion and made a 25' 14 ga with a male banana jack on one end and battery clip on the other. Keep it in the generator kit bag. When I run it each month, I don't ground it. But figure if it needs to run for several days in the weather, a ground makes sense. |
|
One has to understand what the purpose of grounding is in the first place to get an answer to this type of question.
Most people have some vague idea that it is a safety issue and so think it must be a good idea. The reality is a little different. Lets look at a typical electrical system first. Power comes into your home from the electric company from many miles of wires outside your home. It is possible for lightning or other disturbances to affect the voltage on the lines coming into your home. Grounding the neutral at your home limits the voltage that can be seen to earth at your home. It thus offers some limited protection to you because you might be standing next to something that could have a very momentary high voltage to ground that could be very hazardous. How well grounding works to prevent or reduce this hazard is debatable, but that is the sole reason for grounding. With a portable generator there is no danger of these kinds of transients coming into the power lines coming out of the generator. In any case, it is sitting on the ground typically and thus there is very little chance of there being an issue to begin with, unless there is a direct strike, but grounding will not reduce your hazard from a direct strike anyway. The short answer is that the reason why portable generators are not required to be grounded is that it would serve no practical purpose. |