Generator Safety

I'm sure a few of us remember a few years ago the young man that was brought to the hospital out of the northtek site by a rushing vehicle with very serious burns. This happened when he was hot fueling his generator; the fuel spilled and ignited. Although everyone was of the opinion the manifold was hot enough to ignite the fuel, I discovered very quickly (I held my first incident investigation!) that the generator was not properly grounded. I suspect the spilled fuel was ignited by an arc from the grounding point on the generator to a more neutral point around it such as a near by twig, the ground it's self or even the jerry.

Your generator will likely generate more power than you will be using. That power does have to go somewhere and its best destination is the ground your standing on. That power, until it finds the ground will sit static, taking the quickest path to the ground it can find when it does so. That path can be from your left hand, unscrewing the fuel tank cap, through your heart and then to the ground through your right hand, which you are using for balance.

I am quite sure that any generator anyone has here will have a grounding point, especially if it was sold in an industrialized country such as Canada, the U.S. Europe or even Tiawon; hoping to market to industrialized countries. The grounding point is generally a fastener of some sort, usually a screw labeled "GRD". This is the point at which the generator will be wired to look
for a neutral ground.

If you have rented a generator designed for use on pavement, it will likely already have a steel cable running from the GRD screw onto the chassis or the frame with wheels used to cart the genny about on. This is excellent for pavement as the surface of the pavement is the best ground you can find while doing road work. This situation is not so great in the field, which is to say you can do better.

If your generator is resting entirely on foliage (which is not very conductive) that static electricity will run through the surrounding foliage until it it runs down from your ankle to the soul of your feet on your way to check on your power source.

To provide a better ground is as easy as finding a twelve inch nail and wrapping some copper wire around it several times to ensure it is tight and has proper contact with the nail. fasten the other end of this wire to the "GRD" screw or to the point at which it is fastened to the chassis. Drive the nail into the ground. If the earth is lose, dump some water around it.

With all the horror stories aside, these charges can "surge" through your line into your loads as well. This means that everything that your generator is powering can possibly endure, intermittently the excess, otherwise static electricity. That includes your lap top, your mixer, your speakers AND your vibrator. Besides; no one wants to hear a bunch of static over the system do they?