Yep. It really adds to the cost of the homes going in to have a excavator come out and dig another ditch for electrical and phone wires. But, it does pay back for itself in the long run when the people down the street don't have power but you do. If I ever build again, I'm going to hardwire a generator to the house.

 

think winter is over down your way in mass. since i don't see any snow. of course there isn't any in southern maine either. this is april 3rd right

 

Correct.....but if the main high voltage line coming into your community is cut by a 100' white pine, you'll be out of luck. Our community has buried power, but still lost it for 4 days due to primary supply being cut.

You could add a generator pretty easily to your existing home. Either backfeed into your panel, or get a transfer switch. Transfer switch is much safer, but a lot more $. I bet it's illegal to backfeed your panel in MA anyway. Prob illegal to do it in ME too

 

It's illegal in NY for sure.. You can electricute a lineman 50 miles away and never know you did it.

 

Yep. The owner would need to be super careful about throwing the main breaker in their house. Lineman operate on "dead" lines with the same care as they do live ones because so many people backfeed during an outage. Who knows how many forget to kill the main.....Definitely could kill the lineman if he was not protected. You'd know you were feeding the town in a hurry when your generator came to a crawl shortly after startup. I agree with you though, it's dangerous. I do it, but I'm very careful....probably shouldn't.

 

I'm sure any backfeed system is illegal in MA. I'd probably do a transfer switch. I don't want a dead guy on my conscious. I'd also go with a diesel generator if I had the wherewithal to get one. One storm we had about 10 years ago left the whole town without power for 2 days. There was one gas station that had a backup generator to run the station and pumps. They were doing a booming business.

 

I would go with one of these before installing a diesel or gas generator there fun to watch till they have to be serviced http://www.mdpub.com/Wind_Turbine/