What if I yell “no homo!” when I plug it in?
where are you plugging it in?
I mean, there’s only one place for double-headed items to be safely used and it isn’t in the workshop.
…the kitchen?
No idea how and why but my dad once had a cable like that in his workshop.
Short story: we were having a party, bit drunk and wanted power for the bigger speakers, needed an extension, rummaged around and found this one. Of course didn’t check the ends, plugged it in and then thought “oh what a weird male adapter there, lets take it…bzzzzt”.
Have a tiny burn scar on my hand now, luckily nothing else happened. The cable got dismantled afterwards, but I still don’t know why it was there in the first place, he is a pretty good handyman normally.
If you lose power, you can use one of these cables to power your house (or at least, the part of your house on that phase).
This is not how you should do this, but it can work. It is not a good idea (possibly illegal?).
In my jurisdiction, backfeeding your house from a receptacle is very illegal. Transfer switches and interlock kits exist for a reason.
For anyone wondering exactly why it’s a bad idea: Power from your generator can, if your house isn’t isolated from the grid, travel back into the utility lines and backward through the big transformer at the utility pole (so now it’s a few thousand volts again) and give an unsuspecting linesman a nasty surprise. People have died from this. It is a bad idea.
This is also why solar inverters in most countries MUST be able to ‘island’ (logically disconnect from grid) in order to run a battery.
We don’t have a battery yet, so our inverter shuts down on grid loss. Frustrating as hell when there’s an outage on a sunny day, but i get it.
Seems like the power companies should be responsible for either checking there is no back feeding or provide those things for everyone then. (I’m still not advocating for you back feeding your home)
You can’t check for back feeding.
Cable coming from house to pole has no power. Electrician goes to hook up wire. Homeowner puts on generator. Electrician gets electrocuted.
Yes the testing and hooking up could be a small window of time but a fraction of a second after testing is all it takes.
You’d have to constantly test. Just because a lines worker tested that the line is dead five seconds ago doesn’t mean some idiot just plugged one of these in.
They can work, you just need to disconnect your house first then use it. It’s also a good way to burn your house down. If something on the same circuit as the generator pulls more current than the wires in the walls are designed to take, because there’s no breaker in the way anymore it can catch fire.
A former coworker was abroad most of the time. Still, his power meter showed lots of usage during his absence. A tenant in the same house had used such a cord to leech power across the common laundry room.
Now that coworker knew his way about electricity. So instead of the 220V between common and a phase, he rewired his washing machine socket to two different phases, aka 380V, and left for a week.
When he came back, he saw a number of kitchen- and other appliances waiting for trash collection.
3 phase going to a house?
Absolutely normal here. Three phases, now 400 instead of 380V back then, 64A. Standard house connection.
In the States the new standard is 240V @ 200 amps, split phase. Most circuits are half of a phase (120V) but there are 240V circuits for load-heavy appliances like stoves and air conditioning. I’ve heard some people have an extra 240V socket in their kitchens just for tea kettles.
These-phase 400V is the standard house connection here in Europe. Wall sockets are 240V/16A (any phase to neutral), but we also have devices running on three phases, like the oven or the geyser in the kitchen.
Do they put a third of the panel on each phase?
Short answer: Yes.
There are actually so-called “three phase combs” for the fuse panels: Sample Image. You put your fuses on a hat rail (in this case eight fuses, but those combs are available in different sizes), you stick that comb in from below and tighten up the screws. Then you connect the three phases to the connections on the left, or, in some fuse boxes, screw them right onto the bus bars.
That is so clever! I hate working with high voltage but am still fascinated by it.
“this time of year” is 100% christmas.
from people putting up lights, probably trying to run remote power to a box with an extension cord, or because they installed half their lights backward and need this to bridge between the two sets because they rather embrace the danger than redo all the work.
My granpa once assigned a master electrician to make an extension cord after he accidently cut the cable of his hedge trimmer. The electrician built him a male2male cord with the female part on the machine. My granpa almost got electrocuted. 🤦♂️
I sell so many of these around Xmas time, I just make them myself with scissors and electric tape.
What would they even be used for except to short a circuit?
Some genius won’t pay attention to the orientation of a christmas light display while he’s putting them up, he’ll go to plug them in, and they’ll be the wrong way, so he’ll want an “adapter.”
I will just regurgitate what I’ve heard. I think they are used in case power goes out and you have a generator. You need to disconnect from the power grid first, but it should then allow you to power tour house with the generator. It sounds more like a US thing.
Yes, this would technically work. Although, it would only power the hot leg the outlet is connected to which only feeds part of the house.
It’s very dangerous for a variety of reasons. Especially if you forget to shut off the mains breaker. The transformer can backfeed power down the line at line voltages, creating a shock hazard for lineman or anyone else who might have contact with the line.
Wouldn’t any repair worker ground anything they work on first, or assume it is live? I am not even a proper electrician, but “short-circuited and grounded, or treat it as live” has been the rule forever.
Not an electrician, but I would imagine the danger being if the technician checked the wire was off locally, started work and then the home generator starts feeding mid work.
Connecting this to two plugs on the same circuit won’t short anything unless one of the outlets is wired incorrectly.
They’re used to backfeed power to your house from a generator during power outages. Technically not legal to use, but most people aren’t going to pay $1k for a proper transfer switch. They come with the caveat of ‘not to be operated by fuckwits’ since you can kill a linesman if you don’t flip your main breaker before using them.
The only time I’ve ever seen one in use was a friend that had a shed that was powered with lights etc. He had an external plug box on the shed, and would use one of these to jumper from his extension cord to that external plug. It worked, but I shuddered when I saw it.
… and you could easily fix the whole situation by having the shed run a male extension cord out that could be plugged into the generator.
It would also be infinitely more whimsical, since it’d make the shed look like a little appliance with its own chord. Or paint everything and call it a tail, the possibilities are endless.
“Well, let me just plug in the shed real quick”
I saw an electrician use one for troubleshooting. Half the outlets in the house were in serial on the same circuit, and there was a problem in the wall somewhere. He disconnected the wires from the breaker and backfed power from a live circuit to an outlet to see if there were any more breaks further away.
Take it down, darwin demands sacrifice, lest we be riddled with stupidity.
Except that sometimes, those idiots could take people down with them. That electrical fire might spread to another house, and the person getting electrocuted might not be the idiot.
Imagine I’m making the most exasperated, annoyed, disapponted noise possible.
Removed by mod
Today I learned that by being someone’s neighbor, I’m viewed as “choosing to engage with them”.
He didn’t take it to the store and tape it to the shelf so it could NOT be there
K
They cant stop you from buying heat shrink and wire strippers. Don’t let nothing hold you back
Nothing can hold me back. Because I am stuck in place by the electricity coursing through my body.
you don’t even need heat shrink if you have the good plugs which can be unscrewed open
No gay cords allowed!
The gay cords are extra powerful in Europe with a spicy 230v
1 European gay is equivalent to 1.91 american gays
It’s OK - I’m only going to use the suicide cord for my fractal wood-burning project.
Well at that point all you need to do is cut a normal extension cord and strip the ends. Maybe add a switch or a button for extra safety.
Why not have the meters detect and control a disconnect. with all the solar generation around, someone’s gotta have a bad transfer switch somewhere.
Reaction time
In the US, using a cord like this will either be harmless or create effectively a dead short. Typical breakers will catch the latter but it will take tenths of a second for a breaker to react in which time the electricity could kill someone.
Depending on circuit conditions a GFCI might intervene as well, they’re typically faster at reacting (needing a few milliseconds) but for a cable designed to handle full residential power, it’s still enough to kill a person in that small window of time
except american standards mandate GFCI only in bathrooms, so you’ll get cooked before anything trips
Arc-fault breakers are required by code as of now, and it would help this situation quote a bit. However millions of homes don’t have them installed so they’re more at risk.
Most of eastern Europe do this and somehow linesmen don’t get killed. I’m not saying it’s the right thing to do but come on, guys, you have to adapt. If your government is shit.
Can’t adapt if I can’t get my suicide adapter.
Happy cake day!
what a year huh ty!!
