Quote Originally Posted by ben4372 View Post
I have been on multiple outages related to Xcel power going down. Lakewood, and West Denver area. People come out to the truck to see when power will be up. Middle of the day so I asked the guy why he cares, and point at his panels. He tells me its require to power down when power goes down. So the linemen don't get lit up with feed FROM house. Not sure why they cant just disconnect from the grid, I've seen this a few times. I'm not sure if all areas do the same, however I have heard it from multiple excel customers during power outages.
The transfer switch is extra $. Systems without a transfer switch are required to monitor line voltage so the system goes down with the grid so you dont fry the line guys or firefighters that have to shut down a block.