Christmas lights come in strings with a male plug on one end and female on the other, sometimes in the course of hanging them up people create a situation where they think they want to connect the two female ends together, thus they think this is the solution.
Comment on Spicy Electric Holiday Snake
gointhefridge@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
What even is the potential point for this? Is it just a suicide cable?
RicoBerto@piefed.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
The hardware store here has a big sign up about this every winter, explaining why, if you think need this you are wrong, if you ask for one we will not give you one, if you make one yourself you will probably die.
Devial@discuss.online 11 hours ago
Nominally you can use it to plug a generators output into a household circuit, which will provide power to that circuit in cases of a blackout, saving you from needing to unplug everything critical and daisy chain 10 multiplugs to the generator.
It could also be used to connect two seperate household circuits together, if only of them is actually live for whatever reason.
In reality you shouldn’t his at all, ever. Just daisy chain the extension cords. If you forgot to isolate the circuit by flipping the main breaker (easy to do if there’s no power anyway, because of a blackout), and then the grid comes back on, your generator is gonna have a real bad time. And then there’s obviosuly the electric shock risk of using something like this.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
We used one to run power to a garage a couple times per year. It’s relatively safe if you use it right and never have power running through the cord until it’s fully plugged in.
Successful_Try543@feddit.org 11 hours ago
Safe, until someone (accidentally) detaches the wrong end.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 12 hours ago
I hesitate to explain.
Successful_Try543@feddit.org 13 hours ago
If the electric power company has cut your power, e.g. because you didn’t pay, you still can get power from your kind neighbour.
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
I’ve heard it called a “suicide plug”. A common use for them is back feeding power from a generator into your homes electrical panel during extended power outages.
It can technically work but comes with major safety risks such as:
The proper way to do it would be to have a transfer switch and generator plug installed. The transfer switch guarantees that when you’re running on gen power, you’re not back feeding through the transformer out to the power line.