Generlink & Generator Hookups in Dartmouth & HRM

How does a Generlink actually work?

It is a collar that fits between the meter and the meter base, so it sits behind Nova Scotia Power’s meter rather than inside your panel. You plug the generator into it with a single cord, and the house is fed through your existing wiring. There is no rewiring inside the house and no separate subpanel of chosen circuits.

Its other job is the one that matters most and gets discussed least: it stops your generator back-feeding the grid. A generator connected to house wiring without that interlock can energise the line outside, which is a genuine danger to the crew working to restore your power.

Why does this matter more in some parts of HRM?

Because outages are not evenly distributed. Coastal and exposed parts of the municipality, Eastern Passage among them, lose power more often and for longer than the middle of Dartmouth does, and the difference between an outage being an inconvenience and being a problem is largely whether the heat and the freezer stay on.

The other thing that has changed is what a modern house depends on. A house that heated with oil and cooked with gas could sit out an outage far more comfortably than one where the heat, the hot water and the cooking are all electric.

What can it run, and what cannot it?

What the generator can carry, which is a smaller list than people hope. Heat, the fridge and freezer, lights, the internet and phone charging is a realistic set for a portable generator. An electric range, an electric hot water tank and electric heat throughout, all at once, is not.

The useful exercise before buying anything is to write the list of what you actually want running, in priority order. That list sizes the generator. Doing it the other way round, buying a generator and then finding out what it will carry, is how people end up disappointed in January.

Does Nova Scotia Power have to be involved?

Yes, because the Generlink goes behind their meter. The meter has to be pulled to fit it and put back afterwards, which is their work, and Jamie arranges that as part of the installation rather than leaving you to book it.

That is also why this is not a same-day job on a whim. It is far better organised in the autumn than during the week after a storm, when every electrician in the municipality is working through a backlog and Nova Scotia Power is restoring service to thousands of houses.

What about the rest of the storm picture?

A generator answers what happens when the grid goes down. It does not answer what happens when the damage is on your own house, and the two get confused. If the service line has pulled your mast away from the wall, no generator helps until that is repaired, and that repair has its own sequence.

Our guide on storm damage and your meter mast sets out who owns what and the order the repair happens in, which is worth knowing before you need it.

What it costs

Quoted, and it is more predictable than most of the work on this site: the Generlink itself, the installation, and the Nova Scotia Power meter pull. What varies is the condition of the meter base it is going onto, which is worth looking at before anyone promises a number, particularly on an older service.

If the meter base or the service is in poor condition, that turns up here, and it is better found in October than discovered on installation day.

Permits and inspection in Nova Scotia

A generator connection is permitted, inspected work, and it involves Nova Scotia Power directly because of where the equipment sits. It is not in any of the exemption categories in the Electrical Code Regulations, and a permit cannot be issued to a homeowner in any case, as our guide to doing your own electrical work explains from the regulation itself.

Permits and inspections come from Nova Scotia Power Inspection Services on the province’s behalf, and the work is done to the 2024 Canadian Electrical Code.