this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Male to male USB type-c cable, DuPont connector, widdowmaker cord (I don't care that some fools think male to male extention cords are dangerous, it's just a little electricity)
USB-A to USB-A cables are just one "I need to transfer data between two computers" and one tech illiterate away from blown PSUs.
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I can’t think of a not insane reason anyone would need one.
People want them around the holidays because they hang their lights in the wrong direction and end up with 2 female plugs where they needed one to be male.... So the want the danger adapter because they are not wanting to take anything down
I absolutely do not consider that to be a sane reason.
Nope should anyone.
That happens tooooooooo
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You can run something like a house off a generator with one if the main breaker is off; in an emergency and the operation reasonably well planned out (don’t overload wall lines you plugged into, etc.) it might be a net benefit. On the reg is asking for death cause there’s safe ways to do it that sane people would plan for on the reg
That would surely only power a single circuit (due to isolation) and if you have to be selective, a critical circuit like your fridge isn't really likely to have a wall port on the same circuit near where you'd happily have your fume emitting generator..
I'm no electrician but I've generally installed automatic transfer switches (ATS) for mine site server cabinets that then power UPS racks and the transfer switch automatically or manually can switch from mains to generator if mains power goes out (which at a mine is all the time). I feel like a similar and safe system must exist for homes. Or something no different to switching solar to grid and back.
But again, not an electrician.
In your typical household panel there is no isolation. If you're lucky there's a GFCI for the bathroom and kitchen.
Edit: not to imply GFCI provides isolation either
Which is insane to me. RCDs have been required on all household circuits for decades in Australia. Literally saved my life when I was doing dumb shit as a kid.
Edit: Also, by typical, you mean a typical American household :P
I was thinking British, but my understanding of the technology you mentioned I don't see any clear reasons why it would prevent back feeding?
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Wait so, if your kettle fails, your fridge loses power for example?
In Murica, the kettle tripping a circuit breaker would knock out the fridge if the fridge was on that breaker circuit. Anything not on that circuit breaker is fine.
No isolation here just means that if the breaker doesn’t trip, the kettle’s circuit and fridge’s circuit are connected together in the circuit breaker box by copper bars.
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Circuits are connected to the circuit breaker, so it would power whatever is on the breaker. (Or more precisely, whatever is on that leg of the hot.)
If you disconnect the mains then the power will be backfed through one of the circuit breakers and back out to others. If the breaker you plugged naughty plug into is off, it’s isolated. Otherwise, it’ll power whatever circuit breakers are on on the breaker panel.
If you don’t disconnect from the mains you’ll kill a person working to fix the electrical lines for your neighborhood.
Yes, safe and automatic things exist to switch automatically - or even hook up a generator in a pinch manually but safely (no naughty plug needed).
Defo don’t backfeed your abode unless you’re gonna die due to some major emergency!
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At work, I have a freezer with a couple thousand dollars of product in it. If I lost power and only had male plugs to jerryrig the generator into the circuit, I would. BUT only after turning the mains off and padlocking the panel shut. I didn't have to do that as I just wired the generator directly to the freezer after disconnecting it from the mains.
Wait, an electrical outlet can be an inlet too?
Mains outlets aren't smart, they're just wiring with contact points. If you feed power into an outlet, it'll energize the circuit it's on, which is a bad idea if your mains circuit breaker isn't off.
Technicaly it is connected through the breaker so you could only supply as much to the rest of the house as that breaker can pass. Not ideal or the proper way of doing it though. Also the reason to disconnect from the grid is that you could start feeding downed power lines, and if line workers go out to work on the lines they can be electrocuted. Also, theres no telling when power will return. There should be a separete input for the generator and a transfer switch to switch between the generator and grid.
There's a reason why home battery storage systems needs to be connected to the breaker panel. You route power through it. When the batteries aren't needed then it's just a dumb relay for grid power. When you're drawing power from batteries it disconnects the grid.
Only a few industries ever draw power both from grid and local power sources at once (during peak load) and they route all the power sources through a power distribution system which prevents backfeeding.
Yes. It's called backfeeding I believe.
Any outlet can be an inlet if you are daring enough (don't do it with water mains though)
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Why do people want them so bad tho
Christmas lights they accidentally wrapped backwards with the male end of the string all the way at the top of the tree
If you have a cabin or an RV that's wired for electricity, but you don't have any power coming in on the mains, or you don't have mains, you can backfeed the system by plugging your generator into one of the outlets.
The proper thing to do is to use a special outlet that's made for a generator, and perhaps an isolator switch as well, but if you don't have those then you might think to yourself, why don't I just make a male to male plug? It definitely works, but it's also dangerous if you or anyone unplugs it while the system is hot.
While true, the this time of the year part of the poster makes me think it’s for people putting up Christmas lights who ran the string backwards and don’t want to switch it around. This is also more dangerous because it ensures that a live male plug is lying around far from the suicide cable itself.
They want them because they're being lazy/cheap. No, seriously. They're called widowmaker cords for a reason, but inevitably some muppet with two plugs and some wire will come up with the brilliant idea that one of these will work for.
One really sneaky and dangerous place these get made are generator backfeed cheater cables for houses. You see them in RVs, Xmas lights etc too, but generator backfeeds are super dangerous because they're also juggling two potential power sources. A backfeed is where a house/building is disconnected from the grid just by flipping off the main panel breaker, then it's "backfed" by a generator going into another breaker in the panel. Usually, without any type of safety interlock to keep the mains voltage off when the generator is on, or vice versa.
Afaik, this is illegal per housing code almost everywhere that I've seen, but still every now and then some yahoo thinks "wait, if I make a two-ended cable and put a receptacle on the house, I can remove the generator easily without any of the expensive safety crap!" And then grabs a live male plug when they fuck up and didn't shut off the generator or mains voltage...
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Honestly, I've passed the last 2 or 3 minutes trying to make some use form them up. I've come empty-handed.
They can technically be used to power your home from a generator... but please don't
Oh fuck. They can.
Will they burn before the wall wiring? Who knows?!?
Will you forget to shut the breaker down before plugging? YES! How is that even a question?
Just don't forget to disconnect the breakers. This is AC, not DC. Additionally to voltage, you'd also need to perfectly match frequency and phase.
I've used them in a pinch to run a circuit on a generator, but it can be really dangerous in several ways.
You flip the breaker off and plug the generator into one of the outlets on the circuit using one of these and it'll power the rest of the circuit.
But pretty often the generator will put out a lot more amps than the wire in the wall is designed for, and you've bypassed the breaker. If you hook up too many devices you can draw too much current for the wires and start a fire.
More like dickbutt phobia. This is hate against double sided dildo sex
Electrified double-sided dildo sex, no less!
Just because a cable like that blows y'alls fuses?!
It's pure fire!
I made one of these when I was young, poor, homeless, and imminently dying due to being swiftly being frozen to death (with bone tumors coming in second place in the death race). I was able to get an abandoned metal shead with a small heater working quickly in a sudden ice storm using on hand parts and a pirated "outside" power line.
Outside of a significant situation like that... it's not a good idea
I mean he'll, in high school residential electricity class we had one of these for testing our walls, one time it burnt out a wire and the teacher only let me fix it as I was the top of the class, mind you we were only a class of 6 so...
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Funnily enough we had such a cable at home for reasons unknown to me. Then of course the inevitable happened: I was electrocuted by it. I'm fine, but I can definitely agree that such a cable should not ever be made, whatever the reasoning, just don't do it.
if you have a generator and your house has no electricity, you can power your house by plugging a generator into an outlet.
I am not an electrician and dont know how this would safely be done, i assume your house would need to be disconnected from the grid or something.
There are cases when electricians working on the street to restore power get shocked by some house generator feeding power back to the grid.
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No frotting the electricity
Sound it instead.
Cliff's Hardware, near 18th and Castro, San Francisco.
Smack dab in the SF Castro District.
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