Generator Transfer Switches

For various reasons, every year the number of times power outages occur and interrupt in our daily activities increases. Big companies lose thousands of dollars of investment on their equipment and transactions due to power outages. Homeowners also experience damage on their appliances and planned events due to unexpected power interruption. It is therefore vital for every facility that relies too much on electricity to install a backup power supply like a generator. These provide a backup power supply so activities could go on smoothly by converting mechanical energy, from its source such as diesel, natural or propane gas; to electrical energy and restore enough electricity for your home appliances and other equipment. Generator transfer switches are the best feature of this equipment because it can detect power interruption and disconnect the utility power and automatically transfer the power source to that of the device. Once the power is back, it also automatically returns the power source from that of the unit to the utility power.

Generator transfer switches are designed to aid in supplying power from multiple power sources to an electrical circuit. They are generally required or integrated in any backup generator because it isolates the generator source from the utility system once your backup solution is installed in your wiring system. Portable generators do not come up with these switches because the user does the power transfer manually and it can only supply from one to three equipments depending on its energy backup capacity. They can be installed manually in standby devices too. Other options include automatic or a combination of both. Their layout and design could be either simple or sophisticated depending largely on the circuit setup. They also have the capacity to send power to a single circuit or multiple circuits. That means it can accommodate up to maximum of 3-4 appliances attached to it!

The two most common types of general transfer switches are manual and automatic. The former are generally lesser expensive and much lesser complicated than the automatic because it only needs someone on-site to start and shut down the generator. There is no complicated wiring or maintenance required. The automatic transfer switches monitor that power supply and as the name implies, it automatically switches from the normal source or utility supply to the generator power source once a power interruption or outage is detected. They have an alarm and several different features and can switch power supplies without the need for an on-site technician to preside over the transfer of power. 

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