Installed a $1,300 investment to avoid kicking myself in the head if the grid goes down.

[chl]

I understand your point, and I agree that my install does not comply with the NEC which is why I am choosing to not go into details on this site or recommend to others. That being said, between the GFCI protection on the truck, and the path back to ground on the house I am confident in the safety of the system. I will remove it should I ever move out as I wouldn't want someone else utilizing it.

To add, when you have a switched neutral with a sub panel the NEC also requires you to drive a ground rod for that path to go back to ground which is indicated in your video. Do you think all of the people that bought the generac transfer switch/panel have also driven ground rods and bonded to the chassis of their trucks?

I believe the newest NEC says that it should simply be attached to a grounding system and grounding electrode system and as I understand it they changed the language that suggested it needed to be very close by, e.g., the ground rod nearby the portable gen in the video. The GENERAC carries this requirement:

So if you have the truck ground connection attached to your house grounding system (ground wires) and to its ground electrode system (ground bus, ground rods, etc.) you are in compliance. I got that information from a post by an expert in the NEC and grounding systems whose is also a professor at a major university and publishes things on-line frequently on the subject.

However, if you wanted to put a ground rod near where the truck is parked, I'd say find a chassis ground lug and connect a nearby ground rod and wire to that. That would be the best way.

There is a convenient place inside the 12V battery compartment for example as shown above, or you could find/create one nearer the bed of the truck perhaps.

Alternatively, one might use a 120V type plug, leave the hot blade unconnected, connect the ground and neutral to a grounding conductor connected to a nearby ground rod, and plug into one of the 120V outlets (I repeat, no connection to the hot pin). I believe the code might require at least 10AWG or 8 AWG for the grounding conductor, so you'd have to use both the neutral and the ground pin on the plug to make the ground connection to that size copper wire. A chassis ground lug would be a better way of course, as noted above.

Anyway, from my perspective, there is no reason NOT to connect the ground wire if you are using a neutral switching transfer switch and wire everything correctly - I did that and it works with the Lightning just fine. (If a reader of this isn't using a neutral switching transfer switch, why not? Is it the cost? You paid at least $40k for your truck, what is a $400 transfer switch compared to that?)

I only made a point of mentioning this because I read a forum post some time ago where someone was powering a house under renovation with a Lightning with the ground wire unconnected, so there was no ground connection from the Lightning to the service panel ground.

One day, when the ground (earth, dirt, grass) was wet I believe, they touched the truck body and felt a tingle. It appears that their body had become part of a ground loop from the truck neutral to the service panel to the service panel grounding system through the earth and back to the truck chassis to the bonded neutral.

Of course wet ground (earth) is much more conductive than dry ground, but this could be a real issue if some one with a pacemaker should encounter such a 'tingle' - what could that do to their pacemaker?

Just a real-life example which proves the wisedom of the NEC requirements.

And a word to the wise....

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[chl]

Here's the change about the grounding (attached pdf).