Off Grid Life: Learning to Hack into a (GFCI Protected) Generator
Making the move from the concrete jungle to the woods is all it's cracked up to be... but it isn't a walk in to park!!!
Like I've said before, I try to learn something every day. Yesterday I learned to identify jewel weed and was introduced to a trenching tool I had never heard of that uses compressed aire to blow dirt out of the way. Today I'm learning that there are more and more movies being filmed in the area we've just moved to, due to a tax incentive for the industry. Good news for me, that means I may not need to travel so much to go to work (when I do go to work)!!!
Bedore my wife's birthday, we bought ourselves a generator. We found a nice used Honda EB5000x. The person we bought it from had only used it a few times as an emergency power plant when the electricity went out during big storms.
When we finally got around to plugging our camper into it, the breaker on the generator would trip. I tried different outlets on the unit and still, it would trip.
Some of the outlets are 20 amps and some are 30 amps. The camper's main electrical entry point is 50 amps.
Electricity is something I still don't understand very well. There are far too many things about it I don't know.
So I thought maybe I needed to have my 50 amps cable coming out of the camper reduced to 30 amp or something along that thought.
I figured I could work something out with what we had here, so we didn't have to go to town for it (I just don't like to stop what I'm doing to go to a store!).
It's probably not quite to code if a professional electrician came to look at it, but it works. Here's what the wirering looks like:
From the camper, 50A reduced to 30A, reduced to 15A and than back up to that 4 wire 30A plug. A little confusing? It doesn't matter, the breaker on the generator still tripped!!!!
Back to the internet to figure it out (I sure hope I learn all the things I want to learn before the internet shuts down!).
GFCI: Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter
There are a couple types of portable generators out there (two is what I found):
- Bonded Neutral
- Floating Neutral
They both have to do with grounding electricity. I am not going to explain the difference, I don't understand it.
We happened to have the bonded neutral one with a GFCI!!!
The braker trips any time there's a current leak in the circuit or if the home you plug it into also has the same feature. When it senses a leak as little as 4 or 5 milli-amp, the system shuts down for safety.
The reason behind this may be from the type of inverter/charger I have in the camper or an enxterior outlet perhaps not entirely waterproof...
I realize there could be many other reasons but I found a little trick that makes the generator work with this camper and for now I am satisfied with the solution.
It's been extremely hot and humid, it was time to turn the air conditioning on to get the humidity and the heat out of our home before mildew starts thinking it would be a good idea to live here!
Enough technical talk... Let's break into this generator!
This cover has to come off!
On this particular Honda, use a 5/16 socket...
...Or use a philips screwdriver.
So, you see this little white jumper cable with the two yellow ends? That's the bond between the ground and the neutral.
You can disconnect the bottom or the top or the whole jumper if you wish, but make sure you leave yourself a note on how to put it back together when gou need to!
I chose to leave it there, wrap it with electrical tape and voilà, done!!!
It works! We've been using our generator at night for movies and charging up some of our devices and on the hottest days to run the air conditioning. It's been a little over a week now and there's been no problems.
Thank you and until next time!
Some people have a green thumb, I think I may have a green hand!
This post was recently curated by @jackdub and @makinstuff on the Meadows & Makers podcast. I'm just browsing through your blog and finding some inspiration.
Thank you very much for that! I recently have told myself the only time I will spend in front of a screen now a days would be for:
But no more facebook, no video games nd especially no gossiping!
Thank you for finding inspiration, that made my day
Sweet "proof-of-me" photo. Electricity generally scares me. I can do some things but have also learned to have enough healthy respect to not do things by trial and error. Looks like your hack worked. Isn't the internet great?
Hi @steven-patrick, sorry to reply so late. Yea trial and error on electricity is probably not the best idea! For sure the internet is great.
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I am not very fond of having to deal with electricity, our solar controller melted a while back, luckily I got it in time before a fire started but it was scary to say the least, but it is important to know the basics when you go off grid, really happy you got the generator working well done you xx
Hey thanks, I'm happy it worked too! Lots of learning... but that's my happy place!
I didn't even know a charge controller could go up in flames!!!! Sounds like you did get lucky catching it in time.
Nice workaround. Thanks for sharing that little hack. Have you looked at adding a grounding rod to the generator?
Thank you. Yes I have looked inti it but haven't done it yet
I would ground from the metal frame of the generator to a copper rod buried sideways in the ground for maximum dispersal. There are plenty of informative articles online about doing this. Doing this will spare damaging any sensitive electronics that you may have plugged in while operating the generator.
Yes, I need to do this yesterday! I have been working 16 hour days lately away from home, but fortunately, we are using the generator (so far) just to run power to the camper, wich has every outlet ground protected... but I should do it anyways so that I don't forget before I do plug something into it I would regret!
Thanks for the reminder 😁
You are welcome. Yeah that is essentially a 'floating ground' on the camper but that said...the way you re-wired the generator I am not sure if the camper even has a true 'floating ground' at this point. I am in no way an electrician (or anything like that) but creating a true ground at the generator is what I would personally do in your situation. I might even consider doing a similar ground rod from the frame of the trailer.