Prius as an Emergency Generator or P2H

makes me wish i didn't have a propane generator.

 

See the link in my signature. 4000 watts from my Prius, I rarely use my 12 kw propane generator anymore during outages.

 

amazing how little power was lost in the nor'easter.

 

ditto! thank you Lord.

 

Yep, the lights in the house didn't even flicker this time, but I still played it safe and filled up the gas tank.

 

The south shore,Plymouth,and the Cape took the hit,I've never seen so many bucket trucks,only 3 days for me,i feel lucky.
Tues. night.....still 16,000 out,lots of homes ruined,some schools closed for the rest of the week.

 

it's a small percentage compared to past storms, but if you're unlucky enough to be among them, it's too many. my brother in law is in plymouth and came up to stay with us until his power came on sunday night. can't convince him to buy a generator. or a prius!

 

hot shower and a warm meal, i should be renting out rooms!

 

I've been looking but can find no real answer.... Anybody think it would be detrimental in the long run to do this? They say idling a normal car for an extensively long time is bad for the ICE, would the Prius be effected as well, keeping it going for maybe days?

It's an awesome idea and I may do it regardless if necessary, just curious.

 

that's the beauty of hsd, it doesn't idle. it comes on when the battery drops to a certain level and shuts off when recharged. and it adjusts rpm's as necessary depending on state of charge. no more wear and tear than normal driving. it was almost built to be a generator.

 

Converdant doesn't seem to have any technical specifications on their web site. This sounds like an awesome product and something I've been hoping to do for a while. Does anyone have any resources regarding the inverter used, number and type of 120V/240V recepticles, etc?

 

With a 1500 watt load I found mine turned on for 2 1/2 minutes and then was off for 4 1/2. Overall the battery cycling over a day was about the same as a normal rush hour commute. The number of hours you may use it in "emergency generator mode" will be statistically insignificant over the lifetime of the car.

Gas consumption was about the same as a 2000-3000 watt Honda inverter-generator, or about 0.13 gallons per hour on average. This is with no change to our normal living habits during the outage - everyone watching tv, playing on computers with lights on at night, and base loads overnight and during the day while at work. This doesn't include several large loads which I could run with load management from the Prius, but choose not to. I run them from my large generator.

There is ONE thing that I think would make the Prius more efficient as a generator. It needs to charge the battery back up to its normal "full" range instead of the minimum it will do while sitting still. The later is necessary for better mpgs, but a fuller battery would mean fewer engine start cycles - less wear and less energy used to start it which is better for generator efficiency.