Man Powers Home With Toyota Prius
Here we have another story of American ingenuity, thank you:
After a crippling snowstorm slashed across the Northeast and Midwest this holiday season, a Harvard, Mass., resident named John Sweeney came up with a clever method to keep the lights on during a long power failure.
Sweeney hooked his Toyota Prius up to an inverter and powered his home for three days. The Prius’ battery packs a lot more punch than a standard car battery, and every 30 minutes the internal combustion engine kicked in to recharge the battery.
Sweeney couldn’t keep his entire house and extraneous appliances running, but he did power his lights, refrigerator, freezer, stove and TV from the vehicle, and those appliances only used about five gallons of gas over the course of the power outage.
One benefit of proposed plug-in hybrids like the upcoming Chevy Volt is the ability for their power to feed back into a home’s grid when not needed to help cut down on energy bills. We imagine plug-ins could all become de facto generators in situations like this.
Toyota Prius Powers House During Snow Storm (Obsessable.com)
Previous
Subscribe to our feed
Email us your tips!
COOL!
who says hybrids are overrated. ;) show me a diesel that can do THAT! haha ... of course i wouldn't be able to do that by myself ...
eh...
How did they get heat? I meant, they have gas for heat; but no power to run them, right?
So he left his key in the car the entire time? Theft time!!
not eneough power for everything, next time just have 2 priuses on hand, one for the wife too
problem solved
Being from MA I had heard about this from family in the area that had lost power during the storm. That is a pretty good return on gas cost to power the house as running a generator would have consumed more gas then that from the ratings I have seen. I was thinking about the heat question J had asked when I was reading it and it mentions the stove. I was wondering if they had something like a pellet stove that so many around here have turned too. Our pellet stove once started takes very little electricity to run but will heat the whole house.
I would be curious to hear how John had wired the inverter into his car, probably will never be published out of fear that someone will electrocuted trying to do the same thing.
void warranty??