Bonded VS Floating Neutral Generator Does it Matter? 

So when hooking into a plug with just a basic transfer switch that makes sure the main is off and has a breaker in the panel to feed everything from the generator to your house you need to remove the bonding wire if I’m reading this correctly. Then if you want to use it like on a jobsite you can just use a bonding plug to keep everything bonded again and be safe. Great video by the way.

I work on the railroad and have had to deal with this every major storm. We temporarily power interlocking bungalows with every type of generator available at the time during power outages. The 5000+ watt units with gfic outlets we have to convert to floating neutral or they trip and won't power the already bonded electrical panels. It was never an issue before gfic outlets in the new generators. The last group was a pallet of generac 8000 watt units. No big deal if you know what's going on. Like you said only 1 bond for the new fussy generators lol.

What i understand , the rule of thumb is, if you are connecting to a breaker box or back feeding , it has to be unbonded. If you are using extension cords , then it needs to be bonded.

One and only one bonded neutral for each separately derived system'; otherwise, you are creating a dangerous alternative path of current should there be a ground fault. You need to know whether your transfer switch opens the neutral along with the phase conductors; generally they don't; they open the phase conductors and use the home/building's neutral conductor path. In which case, the generator should be set as a floating neutral, if it isn't already When a generator is used as a stand alone power source (i.e., a separately derived system), then the neutral and ground should be bonded. A bounding plug should be handy to quickly changing from floating to bonded neutral when you use for the generator as a stand alone power source. Always mark your generator, asn to its permanent state of boding.

First I've heard of this. Tks JW

thank you so much for this information ,

I just removed the jumper wire on my generator. It’s over 20 years old so I don’t really care about the warranty because there is not one. Even if I bought a new one, I would do the same thing. It’s very easy and now gives me the flexibility to put a plug-in like you showed if using standalone or to use it on my house with plug removed and my manual interlock. Thanks for the video.

Good info, Johnny 🤘👍

I have never noticed that labeling on the front, I need to check my generators to see what they are. Thanks!

We had power out due to a storm on new years. I ran an extension cord to the furnace by Trane from the Honda 3000 generator. The blower turned on but the furnace would not ignite. I had to bind the neutral and ground for the system to work.

If I'm backfeeding a generator to a breaker panel, could I just leave the neutral out of it? Basically, only connect L1 and L2? Also, thanks for the video. Was interesting. Basically, my arc fault breakers go crazy when I backfeed my generator.

Thank you for video! Think I’m somewhat understanding now after being confused for so long. So if I’m plugging directly into house panel, I need the generator in floating neutral. So I need to unbonded. Once I do that I cannot use the inlets in generator at same time? I would have to bond them again? If I leave generator in floating neutral could I hook a plug to bond it so I can use it as portable without having to reopen the generator and plugging everything back up?

QUESTION. If your generator is unbonded because you are connected to the house panel neutral should you still ground the generator frame to a grounding rod ?

Great video. Question: I just purchased a Rigid 8kw generator and using the 30amp receptacle gen outlet and connecting it to house using an interlock. I now want to use the 20amp/120v receptacle with an extension cord to fire my gas heater in workshop in different building with its own elec service. Since using it as floating neutral to house and knowing the gas furnace ignitor will not operate, can I bond just that one outlet? So one outlet floating and one outlet bonded. Thanks

It is critical to check this. Some countries like mine, don't allow floating neutrals or IT systems. Check your code.

Champion generators have several videos on converting their generators from bonded neutral to floating neutral. Inverter generators can be a little more complicated, but most conventional generators are simple to do. But take Johnny's advice and always consult a qualified electrician or you may do more than trip a breaker.

Some UPS battery backups will continue to beep running on a floating neutral generator as it knows that something is incorrect.

Thanks for this video! I have line of 10/3 wire running from my panel to my garage to power my EVSE car charger. In other words, no neutral wire. If I was going to attach a generator to this wire to backfeed a panel theoretically, I would need a bonded neutral generator that would be sending the neutral to the ground, right?

Question I connected the ground and neutral wire in the generator is that ok to do instead making a plug

Rosie and I just purchased a Max peeding 3500 so this winter in the desert we can run our air a few times. We have been RVing 40 years or so and have had several different generators. All worked fine and I never even heard of bonded or neutral. Still a bit confused on when you need it bonded or not. Maybe some examples of the use for them would be helpful! Burlington Bill busking on the road and you-tube.

Hey Johnny, totally off topic but is that LP Smart Siding on your house? It looks great.

Question... I'm running 2 3,500 inverters in parallel. Do i need a single bonding plug in one of the inverters or both?

I've noticed on a few 240v devices like a standard 240v battery charger for example has the earth wire inside the charger connected to neutral is this normal ? How would it effect a generator with centre tap or other types like floating

I have the genmax 7250, need to make it a floating neutral, do you know how to do it on the 7250?

You can definitely bond more than once, it’s required for each separately derived system. The building I’m working in has like 30 or so bond points in the building

I have a WH igen4300df during the Texas ice storm I connected my gen to my inside air handler/gas furnace. It would energize my t stat and you could switch the stat would click like it was calling for the blower but the fan would not run. How do I fix this?

Hey peeps! Just bought predator 5000 inverter generator. Floating neutral. Do I need to ground this thing when the travel trailer is plugged in?

Bonded neutral in electricity. But it did not start this way. So many were using the "grounds" in the same connected. This went on for many many decades. Then the engineers began to see some funny things; where more and multi bonding was causing dangerous things...to the systems and people. It would take too long to tell you why. But it can really be a major problem; IF the systems that are connected together have more than ONE bonding (wiring the neutral to the common wiring AT the power panel). So, The Federal law makes it simple. "ONE bonding at the entrance and NO exceptions". This made companies all over the US; to change it. So they had to go out to ALL of their systems and remove all of their bonding's. Then connect theirs neutral to the ONE bonding where the Power comes in. This applies in every home also. I know this, because my company RCA had to do it (a long time go); or be in trouble with the Federal Electricity laws/codes. So, IF one has a Generator that IS bonded (many do); they MUST break the bonding IN their Generator; IF the power panel is bonded. IF not you can let your gen be bonded.

So I have a portable generator for which I use extension cords, it is not hooked up to my electrical panel. I have learned that it is not bonded, but rather the floating neutral type. Isn't it supposed to be bonded for the way I am using it? It seems like if a device has a fault, if my generator is not bonded, the breaker will not trip and everything is energized leading to the possibility of an electrical shock. Isn't that correct? So should I go in there and add a wire to the neutral and ground lugs to bond them?

If you are curious to how I have this sorted out as a non-electrician, just someone who has been trying to pay attention, so still do your own research / consult a real electrician, this is what I have: 1. GFCI is only for certain situations, like where people and water may meet up. The human body is a resister and contact with water can lower that resistance, making for a particularly deadly situation where things go wrong with electricity. Lowered resistance when making contact with water and electricity means more current flow. More current flow tends to equal death is far more likely. Say your toaster oven is next to your sink in the kitchen and water gets splashed on the toaster oven while you are operating the toaster oven barefoot. Better to have the GFCI outlet detect the small current imbalance between neutral and ground as current flows from a live wire through you and to the case of the toaster oven and trip the GFCI breaker then be toast. GFCI trips with very small current flows to ground specifically because it doesn't take much current to kill you and this is how it can detect that you are taking a hit. So now say you are in your home office room and you have a computer setup complete with either a surge protector or a UPS with a built-in surge protector as basically all UPSes have built-in surge protectors. This computer setup needs a ground - neutral bond for the surge protector to work. The surge protector will take say a lightening strike and dump the excess power to Earth ground. On a generator, it will just dump it to the ground - neutral bond if it surges for some reason, especially if you are using a regular non-inverter generator. But if it cannot detect this ground-neutral bond and establish a sane ground reference voltage, it will not activate. (Basically it checks for ground - neutral continuity and will not activate without continuity.) Now you put in a GFCI. You get continuity with GFCI, so the surge protector activates. When the surge protector dumps power to ground during a surge, the GFCI sees a big ground - neutral current and pops the breaker. On grid power, you may see this happen several times a day and this will ruin your productivity. On generator power, especially a regular generator, you may see this every time your fridge or say older air conditioner kicks on or even a vacuum or blender or what have you and this will definitely run your productivity. For reference, with no GFCI, just a regular ground-neutral bond, the surge protector will dump to ground and you won't even know; short surges do not trip breakers. So you really don't want this GFCI outlet there, especially not on the generator itself where everything connects up to. 2. Ground - neutral bonding - This is central to having a properly working electrical system in the USA. If there is a ground fault, you need it to return to source and clear the fault as in the breaker trips. Any properly done ground wire will be able to handle the current with low resistance in order to pop the breaker. It is just if it is not connected up on the other side, it cannot work and thus you have things energized and an unsafe situation where someone could complete the circuit with their body. The human body doesn't draw that much current, but it doesn't take much current to kill you either, so the breaker will not pop when the circuit is completed this way, but you will continue to get hit by electricity by default. So if you can instead have the power flow over the ground wire back to source and draw the current needed to pop the breaker this way, that tends to work out a lot better. 3. Earth - ground electrode - Earth - ground is more focused around you have a lightening strike to the grid, you need a path to Earth ground to dissipate that energy and stabilize the voltage. I see this as especially in play if you use surge protectors as the surge protector will see the voltage spike and dump it to ground, which a lightening strike causes a differential with a voltage reference that the surge protector relieves and the ground electrode allows the voltage to be stabilized with a ground reference. With a generator, either the surge protector never trips if it can produce very stable power or if say surgy devices are in the loop like a fridge or blender or old air conditioner and the generator can't, it will dump power back through the ground - neutral bond when there is a surge. Maybe if you are operating the generator in an electrical storm, you may still want the ground electrode. But say you hook up an Earth ground electrode (grounding stake) instead of a ground - neutral bond. This doesn't help anything as there is no low resistance path back to source to pop the breaker and may make matters worse depending on what all ends up energized including things that are never supposed to be energized. Whoops. Earth - ground seems to be more icing on the cake with ground - neutral being more key to basic generator safety. I would venture to say the safest way to hook up an Earth - ground electrode is to first make sure the ground - neutral bond is correct. 4. Dual ground - neutral bonds with a GFCI generator - This is a bad idea and will ruin your day. GFCI trips with small ground currents. As every conductor you use is also a resister, what happens with a dual link is you can create a ground circuit loop with the current split between neutral and ground and a voltage differential on both as resisters create voltage differentials. Essentially you share load over the ground wire, which is a big no no. A ground wire is often a bare wire you only dump emergency loads over and the rest of the time it is more or less dormant. A ground wire is connected directly to surfaces humans can normally touch, let's say the metal case on your toaster oven. A ground wire in a loop is a wire carrying current and you don't want to be touching something carrying current. That is unsafe. So now you add in GFCI to your generator, bonding ground to neutral in the generator and say a second bond in your electrical panel. Now as power flows through neutral, it splits the current load over that ground - neutral bond in the panel and it flows through the GFCI ground on the generator as they are essentially two connected up wires in parallel. As soon as any load goes on the generator, this current flows through the GFCI outlet, going through the ground that is not supposed to see current, but is due to the ground loop and so the GFCI pops. So now the power cuts off from the generator every time you try to put any load on the generator. 5. Common ground reference voltage - Something else to throw in there maybe not thought about enough is say you have copper Ethernet cables going around your house and sensitive electronics on either side. It is probably a good idea to make sure all of this equipment has the same ground reference voltage. Especially when you get into analog audio cables, not having a common ground reference voltage is something you can hear if an analog signal is going between powered devices and they are not both bonded to ground / the same ground voltage reference. Going back to the sensitive electronics, you don't want say static discharges happening through sensitive equipment because they did not share a common ground voltage reference. I have seen things like while at work with low humidity strong electrical shocks when making contact with plastic monitor cases as the static charge buildup leaped across through the plastic and regular arching from say the VGA connector on the laptop to the desk, causing the computer to randomly restart when the building grounding wasn't properly hooked up and something was causing static charges to build up on that dry day and major voltage differentials to form. Once the ground wire was properly connected, the issues stopped as reference voltage equalized across the building. Granted this was in a huge building, so this apparently led to the possibility of huge differentials to build up without proper ground reference throughout the building.

Hello need your help. I have a manual transfer switch called Reliance Pro / Tran2 and my generator Honda EU2200i companion30A. Question will this work don’t know if it’s bonded honda stamping neutral floating. What do I need can’t see anything on the reliance that says anything about bonding. I could send you a photo of the transfer switch. Just need your email. Love your channel thank you

Inverter Generators with neutral floating : Can someone answer this in my manual it states (Circuit Breaker - The receptacles are protected by an AC circuit protector. If the generator is overloaded or an "external short circuit occurs the circuit protector will trip".) note last part short will trip ? But I thought a neutral floating wont trip because its not bonded to ground and if say a toaster is shorting out you'll get shocked but the toaster still works ? BTW this is using just an extension cord to say a toaster.....

My small inverter generator has a Floating Neutral. I plan on using it with extension cords only (fridges/computers/toaster/microwave) in emergencies. Would it still wise to use a bonding plug on one of its receptacles? Thanks for your video/advice.

I have the wen 3800 inverter generator

I’m a novice and don’t want to disrespect you, why is this important maybe for average users ? Thank you

Why do all these videos assume you are using a transfer switch ? For that matter a lot assume you have an external disconnect to your house. Since the disconnects have only been code since 2020 I believe and you can get a generator interlock for 20 dollars off the internet as opposed to pricey transfer switches, I think they are not properly addressing a good chunk, if not the majority, of the viewers of these videos.

My new eu2200i gen is an open neutral. It doesnt alliw me to use any electricity. Dead. So why make it that way at all? So dumb

WTF are they talking about