Using car as generator for house power

Absolutely ... who argued otherwise ???

It is more efficient than most next to the house generator but certainly not a turn on automatic full house power. For that you got what you got

 

This is a pretty good idea. Thanks - you just solved a problem for me.

 

Boys and their toys... Much of this is the fun and challenges of doing it and having bragging rights... One if the most valuable assets in an emergency is cheap transportation.... I hate to lose that because I made my car a generator.

I see all this as a "convenient" alternative in a pinch, not a mainstay.

Alan.. Sent with Tapatalk 2

 

Having backup source(s) of power means not having to sit in the dark for three hours. Or six. Especially after spending $4000-5000 to have a LPG/NG generator installed. I'll happily keep my Generac, or Prius, running during an outage, that's why I went through the trouble and expense to establish them as backups.

Nobody said the Prius was able to operate as an automatic standby generator. It most certainly functions well as a standby generator, and it does it much more effectively, and silently, for base loads than any LPG genset. In fact, my setup operates even better than just having an automatic genset because the UPS's batteries will keep everything running for a half-hour without using any generator - all automatic gensets leave you in the dark for 30-60 seconds until they start up and transfer the load. My lights don't even blip because the UPS automatically and instantly assumes the load.

 

The great thing is you still get both, the Prius isn't chained to your house unlike a whole-house genset. Fridges and freezers have thermal carryover so even if the Prius was your only emergency power source you could still unplug and go to work for 10 hours, come back and plug it back in. If you really want to be safe, keep several milk jugs 3/4 full of water sitting in the back of your freezer. When an outage occurs put some in the fridge and keep some in the freezer, then no worries about food safety even when you are away.

I wouldn't want to ride my Generac to work anyway, that steel lid would be soooo uncomfortable in rush hour traffic.

 

I totally agree!!! Who cares about saving an extra $20 a day when your power is out. I want the house to keep powered and I want transportation at the same time. These 10KW 220V China generators are cheap and they run on propane, natural gas and gasoline. They are the perfect solution for me.

 

One of the differences between ordinary and exceptional engineers is the recognition that "for me" means the customer's requirements, not your personnel preferences. You are of course allowed to share alternate solutions but ultimately it is the customer's requirements that count . . . even if you think what they want is not the way you would go.

There is a separate thread for those who advocate standalone generators. The thread starts with the very real and deadly aspects of a standalone generator. Real as the grave because people die every year from those things BUT I don't mind if they are "the perfect solution to you."

Bob Wilson

ps. It is the height of hubris to disrupt a technical thread because "it is not for me." There is no requirement that anyone put an inverter in their car and use it. If someone prefers a standalone generator, fine by me. But when someone believes it is their 'job in life' to stand in the way, to obstruct a technical thread venting their spleen . . . well PriusChat has a technical solution: "Ignore User." I don't like having to use it but if the choice is 'noise', it provides relief.

 

Obviously you didn't read my post on the last page. You left off a digit... the savings are around $120 per day when comparing large 10-12 kw LPG gensets with the 4 kw Prius solution I'm using. You go more than a few hours without power and those savings add up to massive numbers.

 

Well let's talk about advantage then.

Setting up a battery system on a standalone generator means lots of maintenance keeping the cells equalized and fresh, otherwise you put up with the noise of "no batteries" and continual fumes.
Having the generator running constantly is also very inefficient... Otherwise you have to be awake and be handy to fire it up for even the smallest of duties. Ie: turning one one light bulb or brewing a cup of coffee or a quick warmup with the microwave.

A large generator will certainly muscle it's way through normal peak loads better, but it fails at the small stuff in practicality.

The silence of batteries is sweet!

Simply throw in a small inverter and mount it in the prius, and you have the perfect camping solution too!
Fold down the seats, lay out your sleeping bags and set the air temp where you want it... Point the rear if the car down wind.
The ice will cycle as needed to keep the traction battery charged, otherwise you have complete silence!
Run an extension cord and you can light up several camp sites!

And even when the car runs, it's quieter than a small generator.

Just wanted to bring balance to the thread!
It's always handy having more tools!

I have a lot of money tied up in tools I rarely use.


Alan.. Sent with Tapatalk 2

 

If anyone is interested in my install of the "AIMS Prius 2kW Pure Sine Wave Inverter for Backup Power Generator" PWRI2000S240VDC from eBay the my write up is here:

My install and review of the AIMS Prius 2kW Pure Sine Wave Inverter for Backup Power Generator | PriusChat

 

Looks good. Just enough wattage to keep life normal.

 

It is arguably a GOOD thing for the inverter to NOT be grounded. That way there is no path back through ground, so you can grab either line ( but not both ) and not get shocked.

 

Solar - Schneider Electric

It sits between your breaker box and the utility and you connect up a battery bank, and optionally a PV array, and a generator. It charges the batteries from mains, PV, or generator, whichever is available, and supplies continuous power to the whole house. You can run up to 3 of the 6KW units in parallel to be able to run your central A/C, hot water heater, etc all at once. It is even smart enough to run the house at low load all night and fire up a generator ( that has a remote start capability ) automatically to recharge the batteries when they get low, then shut it back off.

I was thinking about doing this, but estimated a total system cost to be around $10k, so decided it wasn't worth it

 

There is no way this is right. Assuming the generator uses 1 gal of gas an hour ( which is pretty high ) at $3.50 a gallon, that's $84 a day. The prius is going to cost less since it can shut off the engine when under low load, but it isn't going to be *that* much better.

 

I agree!!! Paying $84 to power your entire house for a day for the 3-4 times a year the power goes out not a lot of money.

And that is for a 10KW unit, not 3KW that the Prius outputs. A hair dryer or a microwave is draws 2KW.

 

I don't particularly care about outages of under a day. It is the 2-7 day outages of the occasional wind and ice storms, and the multi-week outages that will likely accompany the major Japan-style subduction zone quake when (not if) it strikes here, that are of greater interest. Fuel availability becomes an issue, so efficiency still counts.

Report makes chilling forecast on Northwest quake
New Zealand earthquake holds lessons for Seattle

 

On the surface the XW system has a lot of advantages, but it is far from perfect. For starters lots of people have had problems with its communication buss, which you would think would be pretty simple to master in this day of reliable off-the-shelf networking equipment. It has also seen little support from Schneider since they bought out Xantrex, with large software bugs left unfixed. I'm not against the system though, I've been waffling between either the XW or micro-inverters for a while now.

 

Obviously you didn't read my post on the prior page, either. The numbers are right there. 10-12 kw gensets use 1.25 to 1.5 gallons per hour minimum even with no load. Running most of my house normally - no load management - my Prius averages 0.13 gallons per hour. I'll leave it to you to click back to that post to see the math.

 

... and you haven't been doing much reading either. 3 kw is the most it will do continuous 24/7. You can go 5-6 kw for an hour, and several times that in a surge.

You aren't paying $84 per day to power a 10 kw genset @ $3.50/gallon. You are paying minimum $105 even with no load. Again, all in that link I posted in the post just above this. You are welcome to spend $105 per day when most of the time you only need 200-300 watts, so most of that propane is wasted.

I'll spend $11 and spend that $94 per day I save on a really nice dinner each night. After Sandy we lost power for 55 hours, your genset would have cost me $240 (my 12 kw genset would have cost me $288). My Prius cost $25.

 

Don't worry, Netbook and psusi will be sitting there on day 5 with empty tanks while you and I are flipping channels and drinking cold beer for 2 more weeks.