Connecting a generator to your house in Queensland has one legal method. A licensed electrician installs a generator changeover switch at your switchboard and a weatherproof inlet on an outside wall. Flip the switch, and the house disconnects from the grid before generator power reaches a single circuit.
Plenty of households never need that much. Leads run straight from the generator to the fridge and freezer, will carry most outages, and they need no electrician at all. The hardwired setup comes down to convenience and how often your street has a blackout.
Is it legal to connect a generator to your house?
Yes, through a changeover switch installed and tested by a licensed electrician. Any other connection to your fixed wiring is unlicensed electrical work under Queensland’s Electrical Safety Act 2002, the same framework that covers every circuit in the home.
The standard behind the setup is AS/NZS 3010, which deals with generating sets. Its whole concern is one condition: the generator and the grid can never feed the house at the same time. Interlock kits turn up in a lot of online advice. They’re a US switchboard product, and the changeover wording in AS/NZS 3010 is what applies in Australia.
Once the job’s done, your electrician issues a certificate of testing and safety. File it with your other electrical compliance records. Don’t expect an insurer to be sympathetic if a fire traces back to a home-made connection, and that certificate is the first thing they’ll ask about.
Can you connect a generator to your house through a power point?
No. The method you’ll see suggested most often is a lead with a male plug on each end: one into the generator, one into a power point. And it works, which is the whole problem. The house lights up the first time, so people assume the method is sound. One success on a calm afternoon says nothing about the night it goes wrong.
The plan depends on you turning the main switch off first. Every time, in the dark, mid-storm, possibly with a torch in your teeth. Miss it once and the generator’s output runs back through your meter to the street transformer. Transformers work in both directions. Push 230 volts into one side and high voltage comes out the other, onto a line an Energex crew believes is dead. Line crews treat everything as live because they know people do this. That isn’t permission.
Then the grid comes back while the generator is still connected. The grid wins that fight, and the generator loses badly.
The smaller problems would rule it out on their own. Once one end is plugged in, the pins on the other end are live in your hand. And a power point was never built to be a supply point, so the generator’s full output runs backwards through a circuit with its safety switch on the wrong side.
If you have to look up how to wire one, you have your answer.
What does a generator changeover switch do?
A generator changeover switch (often called a transfer switch) decides which supply your house sees, grid or generator, with an off position between them. The mechanism can’t sit in two positions at once, so the step-by-step power point method relies on you remembering no longer exists.
The generator plugs into a weatherproof inlet on an outside wall, and a cable runs from that inlet back to the changeover at your board. Your existing circuits stay as they are. A separate set of “generator only” power points is more work for a worse result, because the wiring you need is already in the walls.
Some installs lock the generator to a fixed group of circuits chosen on install day. We prefer a setup that lets you pick circuits on the night with your own breakers. Six circuits picked in July can look like the wrong six in a February storm.
Older boards don’t always have room for it. If yours still runs ceramic fuses or has no spare space, a switchboard upgrade usually has to come first. Better to find that out before you buy the generator.
Do you need a hardwired connection, or are extension leads enough?
For most outages, leads are a perfectly good setup. Run them from the generator to the fridge and freezer, and you’ve covered what spoils. Leads also make you choose what gets power, so no fuel goes on a lamp someone left on in the spare room.
The weak point is getting them inside. A door or window propped open lets in exhaust and, through a Brisbane summer, every mosquito in the street.
A hardwired inlet and changeover switch is a convenience you pay for once. Dragging leads through the house at 2 am, or flipping a switch and going back to bed. Before you connect a portable generator to your house permanently, be honest about how often you lose power. A handful of outages in 20 years and the install may never pay for itself. We’d rather tell you that than sell you a job you don’t need.
Longer or more frequent outages tip it the other way. So does anyone at home who relies on powered medical equipment.
How much does it cost to connect a generator to your house?
We can’t give a fair figure without seeing the house, and a page that quotes one sight unseen is guessing. How much to connect a generator to your house comes down mostly to distance and the state of the board.
Most of the labour is the cable run from the inlet to the switchboard. An inlet beside the meter box is a short job. A run from the back of a highset house, under the floor and up into a board on the opposite side, is a much bigger one.
Then the board itself, which needs space for the generator changeover switch. Solar adds a step. So does a second board feeding a granny flat or shed.
An easy job still costs real money. You’re paying for the licence and the certificate as well as the hours on site. Our quotes are fixed and free, so the number you’re quoted is the number you pay.
What should you sort out before the install?
Size the inlet and cable for the generator you’ll own next. The one in the shed now may not be around in five years. The extra cost at install is small, and redoing the inlet later isn’t.
Know which board feeds what. Granny flats, sheds and second dwellings often run from a separate board, and a changeover at the main board won’t reach them unless the install is planned that way.
Ask your electrician how the generator’s neutral and earth will be handled. Portable generators differ here. Some have the neutral bonded to the frame and some leave it floating, and the arrangement has to suit your home’s earthing so your safety switches still trip when they should. A clear answer takes about a minute. If your electrician can’t give one, get another electrician.
If you rent, leave the board alone and talk to your property manager. Alter the installation yourself and every electrical fault from then on becomes your problem.
How do you run a generator during a power outage?
Most guides on how to connect a backup generator to your house stop at the install. The order you do things in on the night matters as much.
- Set the generator up outside, well clear of doors and windows. Never in the garage or under the house. Buy a lead long enough to make that easy.
- With the generator’s own breaker off, start the engine.
- Turn off the circuit breakers on your board, then move the changeover switch to generator.
- Switch the generator’s breaker on and bring circuits back one at a time, a few seconds apart. Listen to the engine. If it starts labouring, something comes off.
- When the grid returns, switch the generator’s breaker off, move the changeover back to mains, then stop the engine.
The generator breaker stays off while the engine starts and stops because that’s when the voltage is dirty, and dirty voltage is what damages electronics.
You’ll need less power than you think. A fridge, a freezer, lights, ceiling fans, the modem and phone chargers sit comfortably on a small generator. Air conditioning is what blows the budget. Keep heating loads off it altogether, since electric hot water and the oven burn fuel for very little return.
A generator at half load will outlast one pushed to 90%.
Mark your switchboard before storm season. Green dots on the essentials, red on the circuits that stay off. Nobody enjoys reading a circuit chart by torchlight.
Can you connect a generator to solar or a 3-phase home?
Yes to both, with extra planning in each case.
How to connect a generator to a solar system
On a standard grid-connected system, the solar inverter has to be isolated whenever the house runs on generator power. A grid-tie inverter can mistake the generator for the grid and start exporting into it, which a portable generator handles poorly. Your electrician wires the changeover so solar drops out with it, or gives you a clear isolation step to follow on the night.
Can you connect a generator to an inverter?
Only if the inverter is built for it. Some hybrid and off-grid inverters have a dedicated generator input and will charge the battery from it. Most grid-tie string inverters have nothing of the kind. Check the model’s manual, or ask the installer, before you buy a generator for this job.
How to connect a 3-phase generator
A 3-phase generator needs a four-pole changeover and a phase rotation check before anything motor-driven runs on it. Most portable generators are single-phase, though. On a three-phase home, the usual approach is a single-phase changeover covering the essential circuits.
Generator changeover installs across Brisbane
Dylan and Kristine Dawson have run Dawson Electric from Woolloongabba since 2007, and every electrician on the team holds a full licence. If you’re weighing up whether to connect a generator to your home, we’ll look at your board, tell you straight whether leads would do the job, and give you a fixed quote if they won’t. Call 07 3324 1447 or book a time with our team.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not to the wiring. An inlet or changeover is licensed electrical work, however simple the online instructions make it look. Leads plugged into appliances need no licence.
Only with leads to appliances. Anything touching the installation needs the owner's approval through your property manager.
For home backup, yes. Inverter generators run quieter and use less fuel at part load, which is how a house runs for most of the night. Their output is cleaner as well, and modems, TVs and computers notice the difference.
LPG, if your generator can take it. Stale petrol causes most of the failures we see on generators that sit unused for eleven months of the year, and LPG keeps indefinitely in the bottle. On petrol, run the tank dry before storage or add a fuel stabiliser.
Nothing dangerous. The changeover keeps the grid and generator apart, so the house keeps running on generator until you notice or the fuel runs out.
Most are done in a single visit. A long cable run or a board that needs upgrading first adds time, and we'll tell you which applies when we quote.
