Only through equipment designed for it — a transfer switch or an inlet arrangement installed under the applicable wiring rules. Connecting a portable source to house wiring any other way endangers whoever works on the network, and the regulations address it directly.
There is a clear line between a station used by plugging appliances into it and a station that becomes a source for a building.
Why the interlock exists
Two supplies must never be able to meet. If a local source can feed back into the network, it energises conductors that people elsewhere have every reason to believe are dead. Every set of wiring rules addresses this, and the mechanism is a physical interlock rather than a procedure.
What that means for the installation
A transfer switch or a changeover arrangement, an inlet rated for the job, and the work done under the national rules — which in most places means a qualified installer and a notification. None of that is a product characteristic of the station.
What the station has to support
An output capable of feeding the circuits chosen, a connection method the maker documents, and behaviour on switchover that the equipment expects. A station with no documented integration path is not a candidate, whatever its capacity.
The alternative that avoids all of it
Choosing which appliances matter and running them from the station directly with ordinary leads. It is less elegant, it touches nothing in the building, and it is why most stations are sold and used that way.
Where this page and the manufacturer’s documentation differ, the documentation is the one to follow. Every capacity, output, input window, current limit, cycle count and temperature threshold on this page comes from the maker’s own published figures, with the unit as printed and the source named. None of it is measured here, and no figure is converted into another convention, because a converted number is a different number. And the limit this page does not cross: no cable size, fuse rating, earthing arrangement or mounting described here makes an installation safe. The page reports what a maker specifies for its own product — an input protection device, a clearance, a grid standard it names — and what applies to your installation is decided by the regulations in force where you live and by whoever is qualified to work to them.
What people ask before they order
What does a transfer switch do?
It makes it physically impossible for the house to be connected to the mains and to a local source at the same time. That interlock is the point of the device, and it is why an improvised connection is not an equivalent.
Which models support this at all?
Some stations publish an integration path and the equipment it requires; most do not. Where a maker documents one, this site reports it as the maker’s statement rather than as a general capability.
Last reviewed 16 September 2026