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Powering critical appliances with your car during an electricity outage is tricky: if the outage lasts for an unexpectedly long time, you end up with no power a

Powering critical appliances with your car during an electricity outage is tricky: if the outage lasts for an unexpectedly long time, you end up with no power and stranded at home with a car that has no miles in the tank. Meanwhile, you can buy a generator for as little as $400.

mrfusion 6y ago
Last time I bought a generator I used it once. Two years later when I needed it it wouldn’t start. You’ve got to also invest effort in taking care of the thing. Oil changes, don’t leave fuel in it, run it every two weeks.
- selykg 6y ago
  I've personally found that leaving gas in is fine, under two conditions: 1. You use ethanol free gas. This is more expensive, but it's also the same gas I run in all my lawn equipment so I generally have some around during the summer months. 2. If you plan on letting it sit for awhile use a fuel stabilizer in it. But yea, a safe thing to do is to run it out of fuel, especially if you have ethanol in it, because that shit will kill the plastic parts in the carburetor if it sits. Once it's out of fuel, run it every month for awhile with some new gas in it just to keep it running and active. You'll want to run it long enough that you burn out any potential water in the oil, so let it get to normal operating temperature and run it for a bit longer and you should be good. This is also good for electric start models which have a battery or capacitor that will need a regular recharge.
abqio 6y ago
Surely the car could stop powering external devices before draining the battery. It could even be settable depending on how many "miles" you're willing to spend during the outage. A generator would be ideal but if you already have the car it'll do in a pinch.
hndamien 6y ago
Not a huge issue if people around you have solar and cars pushing energy back to the grid.
- new_realist 6y ago
  I would think in an extended power outage, like an earthquake or hurricane, the first thing people would do is to stop their car from draining into the grid. Natural disasters bring out a survival mindset, and people want to keep their options open, and power for their own use.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  The grid is not that simple, and many/most solar installs will not work in an outage to prevent islanding. It's extremely dangerous to have a section of wires live during an outage.
  - hndamien 6y ago
    I was suggesting that in a decentralised grip with virtual power plants there would still be power, and not islanding.
davedx 6y ago
It's not that tricky, either manually or automatically limit it so battery doesn't deplete to less than 20%?
- new_realist 6y ago
  Sure, but what if you need to get out of town quickly or go to work or the hospital the next morning? 20% isn’t going to cut it. There is no safe discharge point when there’s a good chance your car will turn into a brick because the power is out.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
netcan 6y ago
>>Meanwhile, you can buy a generator for as little as $400. You can buy a generator for even less, and it makes for a more robust emergency plan. But... most people don't. The tool you have is always better than the one you don't. That's why phone cameras (and apps generally) are such a game changer. If you own a tesla, you own a big battery and it goes where you go.
- sizzle 6y ago
  I suspect the general maintenance of the gas generator is too much work for the common person e.g. changing oil, treating the gas if you are letting it sit in the tank for months, etc.
crazyjncsu 6y ago
Yeah, but generators are a PITA. Mine has at best a 50/50 chance of starting without having to go to the shop to clean the carb, etc. It would be quite nice to know I had quick, reliable power on tap that is regularly tested just in the normal course of my life.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Propane (or natural gas) might be a better answer here if a propane conversion kit is available for your generator engine or if piped NG is on your property. Failing that, buying aviation gasoline (whether 92UL or 100LL) or using gasoline unpolluted with ethanol, a gasoline stabilizer, and exercising the generator for 2 minutes every half-year is probably time and money savings over cleaning the carb. Cleaning the carb is also an easy sub-15 minute task from tool drawer open to tool drawer shut the second time you've done it. Give yourself an hour the first time maybe. A bottle of spray carb cleaner will last you a decade in all likelihood. I go through this every other year or so with seasonal equipment (lawnmower and snowblower) and it's easier to clean the carb when needed than to chase down and keep avgas on hand.
  - brianwawok 6y ago
    Switched all my outdoor tools (push mower, weed eater, leaf blower, chainsaw )To electric, and it has saved so much yearly messing with small engines. Huge win for me. Some of these tools I only use a few times a year, so ends up being near a 1:1 using the tool and doing maintenance. Riding mower is the only gas engine I have to mess with. Counting down the years until a more competitive battery riding mower is sold.
    - athenot 6y ago
      I did the same, with the EGO line of tools. It's so much more enjoyable to do landscaping tasks without the noise. I recently got the Ryobi riding mower, which is a glorified golf cart (lead-acid batteries) but works really well as a rough cut. When the blades are in action, it makes the sound of a box fan, and when the blades are off, it's totally quiet. For the tools that I haven't electrified (my Mantis tiller and Trucut reel mower), I stick with Honda engines. They are a marvel of reliability compared to the others. Only exception is my shredder which has a Kholer engine and does seem to be good too. All these start on first pull after a winter in storage.
_ph_ 6y ago
A fully charged Tesla could power my condo for a week at normal loads, in emergency mode probably a month. And of course, you would limit your charge usage to a safe margin. This isn't a plan for huge disasters, but would be a great thing to have for people who live in regions with pretty reliable power supply to bridge outages of a few hours to a day or two. And of course, if you have solar on the roof, the car could be the bridge almost infinitely long.
- new_realist 6y ago
  The average home draws a kilowatt, so two days for a 100 kWh car at 90% efficiency drawing from 80% to 20%. I agree that for the non-paranoid who don’t need to drive far to work the next morning, it could work out fine.
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    Depends where you are looking. In Germany a typical household draws like 10 kWh/day. If you have a large family, then it might be more, but then you might have a second electric car. In any case, it would be an additional option for power failure, whether that is the right approach for a certain situation, depends on that situation.
    - brnt 6y ago
      We use 1-4kWh/day, and that sort of battery is very easy to find and cheap. Alas, panel installations do not seem to have a socket where you can just plugin a battery, they can only feed back into the grid. At least, not here (NL).
      - _ph_ 6y ago
        You should look around, here in Germany many companies are selling solar solutions with a home battery integrated. And of course, there it the Tesla powerwall, which is for the same purpose.
        6y ago
nicoburns 6y ago
This is much less of an issue for people who live in cities. At least in Europe, you can probably walk wherever you need to go.
Someone1234 6y ago
$400 generators cannot run large home appliances as the initial wattage surge during startup will overload them and cause the breaker to fire. For example, a fridge-freezer might need only 600 watts to run but will also need up to 2000~2500 watts to start. You'll struggle to find a $400 generator at 2K+ watts capacity, even if that load is only for ten seconds. Maybe "own-brand" generators from e.g. Harbor Freight, but would you trust it? And that's just for a single appliance, large space heating/cooling systems are even more problematic/spikey. Buying generators for your home is actually more expensive and complicated than many people realize. You'll quickly find yourself looking at $5K Honda inverter generators w/7K watt capacity even if that seemed overkill at the outset.
- as-j 6y ago
  I ran my whole little house+farm in Indiana off a 5kW (7.5kW surge) generator for a week, and then on and off during other power outages. It was 12+ years ago, so I don't remember exactly how much I spent, but I'm pretty cheap and didn't have much cash back then so I suspect it was about $500. It was a small household, no AC, but well pumps, fridges etc and it ran just fine.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bradstewart 6y ago
  For a semi-permanent installation that can plug into your electrical panel, yes you're looking at a lot of money. But I have a Champion portable 3500 watt continuous (4000 watt starting) that was $397 that has no problem running my refrigerator, a few lights, fans, and a small window AC unit. I run extension cords to the specific appliances I need to power during an outage.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  Could you use a battery or capacitor to bridge the gap?
- londons_explore 6y ago
  A trick if you need it in a pinch to start a device with a motor from an undersized generator: Wait 10 mins for any heat/pressure inside the fridge to even out. Hook the fridge up to the (stopped) generator. Hold your finger on the breaker to force it to engage, even though the generator isn't running yet. then start the generator with the pullcord. It'll be very hard to pull, so you need both hands... As the generator splutters to life and accelerates, so will the fridge motor. Since both are accelerating slowly, the starting current is far far lower than would happen if the generator was already running when he fridge was connected. Also works for escalators, vacuum cleaners, blenders, angle grinders, etc. If the generator doesn't get up to operating speed within ~15 seconds, stop and give up or the generator coils will burn.
calaphos 6y ago
The energy a car uses is insanely large compared to e.g. a fridge. You could probably run it at least a month with a smallish 40kwh battery. Even running everything as normal probably uses less than a kw on average so electricity outrages would have to last multiple days to be a problem.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  > electricity outrages would have to last multiple days to be a problem Ya, and that's pretty rare in most areas so it seems like a reasonable plan. I wonder if it's worthwhile doing a small "emergency" scale solar installation or if you may as well just do a full scale system once you've installed the rest of the infrastructure. Looking for opinions...
  - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    Typical PV installations won't power your house in a blackout (one during the day, that is), since they feed directly into the grid, and then your house receives power from the grid. Hence the market for something like the Tesla Powerwall, which reroutes all that enough that you can power your home from its battery, and charge it from the PV if the grid goes down (for a while - each Powerwall's battery is 13kWh, about 1/6 of a Model 3...) . But to your general question, at this point the panels themselves are a fairly small part of the overall cost, so I don't think most people would want to go small, if you're installing any kind of proper inverter system, make it big enough to cover your usage.
IkmoIkmo 6y ago
Sounds like an easy fix (e.g. stop depletion at 35%). And this could depend on the user as well. I live in the middle of the city, I really couldn't care less if my car ran out of miles in terms of an emergency situation, perhaps I'd configure it to 10%. My nearest supermarket is a 5 minute walk. There's 1 thousand neighbours, a hundred different stores, 3 police stations and a hospital within a 10 minute walk. Yes I can't drive to work but the power outage isn't likely to have a significant impact. There may be some edge case scenarios. Say I need to pick up kids from school on the other side of the city during a long-lasting power outage, no taxis, friends, teachers, public transport, bicycles etc available to help in these rare situations... but we're really not in the realm of everyday occurrences anymore at this point. And we shouldn't exaggerate either. A Tesla has 100 kWh. Average household uses about 30kWh per day. And that's not an emergency situation where you ration energy (e.g. not doing a big chunk of laundry once a week). Lighting a room for 10 non-daylight hours a day is about 1 kWh. A full iPhone charge is something like 0.02 kWh? You can charge about 5000 iPhones on a single Tesla charge. Stuff like this, connectivity, refrigeration, lighting, are probably key in an emergency situation. Power outages are not likely a big deal. Of course there are people who live in a rural area etc and need to be more self-sufficient. Very different story. But for 90% of tesla owners this probably will never be a big deal if capped at some minimum battery level.
natch 6y ago
Or solar panels. Solar panels are great. No moving parts. No getting robbed at a gas station during SHTF. Yes we all know the sun isn’t always shining, but with batteries in the picture, solar panels are even better. The car is just one more option that can be used in a pinch and wherever you are. The future is looking good.
coronadisaster 6y ago
> Meanwhile, you can buy a generator for as little as $400. Just don't buy it at the last minute (all stores run out in widespread power loss) and expect it to sit for years.

mrfusion 6y ago

Last time I bought a generator I used it once. Two years later when I needed it it wouldn’t start. You’ve got to also invest effort in taking care of the thing. Oil changes, don’t leave fuel in it, run it every two weeks.

selykg 6y ago
I've personally found that leaving gas in is fine, under two conditions: 1. You use ethanol free gas. This is more expensive, but it's also the same gas I run in all my lawn equipment so I generally have some around during the summer months. 2. If you plan on letting it sit for awhile use a fuel stabilizer in it. But yea, a safe thing to do is to run it out of fuel, especially if you have ethanol in it, because that shit will kill the plastic parts in the carburetor if it sits. Once it's out of fuel, run it every month for awhile with some new gas in it just to keep it running and active. You'll want to run it long enough that you burn out any potential water in the oil, so let it get to normal operating temperature and run it for a bit longer and you should be good. This is also good for electric start models which have a battery or capacitor that will need a regular recharge.

abqio 6y ago

Surely the car could stop powering external devices before draining the battery. It could even be settable depending on how many "miles" you're willing to spend during the outage. A generator would be ideal but if you already have the car it'll do in a pinch.

hndamien 6y ago

Not a huge issue if people around you have solar and cars pushing energy back to the grid.

new_realist 6y ago
I would think in an extended power outage, like an earthquake or hurricane, the first thing people would do is to stop their car from draining into the grid. Natural disasters bring out a survival mindset, and people want to keep their options open, and power for their own use.
Pfhreak 6y ago
The grid is not that simple, and many/most solar installs will not work in an outage to prevent islanding. It's extremely dangerous to have a section of wires live during an outage.
- hndamien 6y ago
  I was suggesting that in a decentralised grip with virtual power plants there would still be power, and not islanding.

davedx 6y ago

It's not that tricky, either manually or automatically limit it so battery doesn't deplete to less than 20%?

new_realist 6y ago
Sure, but what if you need to get out of town quickly or go to work or the hospital the next morning? 20% isn’t going to cut it. There is no safe discharge point when there’s a good chance your car will turn into a brick because the power is out.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

netcan 6y ago

>>Meanwhile, you can buy a generator for as little as $400. You can buy a generator for even less, and it makes for a more robust emergency plan. But... most people don't. The tool you have is always better than the one you don't. That's why phone cameras (and apps generally) are such a game changer. If you own a tesla, you own a big battery and it goes where you go.

sizzle 6y ago
I suspect the general maintenance of the gas generator is too much work for the common person e.g. changing oil, treating the gas if you are letting it sit in the tank for months, etc.

crazyjncsu 6y ago

Yeah, but generators are a PITA. Mine has at best a 50/50 chance of starting without having to go to the shop to clean the carb, etc. It would be quite nice to know I had quick, reliable power on tap that is regularly tested just in the normal course of my life.

sokoloff 6y ago
Propane (or natural gas) might be a better answer here if a propane conversion kit is available for your generator engine or if piped NG is on your property. Failing that, buying aviation gasoline (whether 92UL or 100LL) or using gasoline unpolluted with ethanol, a gasoline stabilizer, and exercising the generator for 2 minutes every half-year is probably time and money savings over cleaning the carb. Cleaning the carb is also an easy sub-15 minute task from tool drawer open to tool drawer shut the second time you've done it. Give yourself an hour the first time maybe. A bottle of spray carb cleaner will last you a decade in all likelihood. I go through this every other year or so with seasonal equipment (lawnmower and snowblower) and it's easier to clean the carb when needed than to chase down and keep avgas on hand.
- brianwawok 6y ago
  Switched all my outdoor tools (push mower, weed eater, leaf blower, chainsaw )To electric, and it has saved so much yearly messing with small engines. Huge win for me. Some of these tools I only use a few times a year, so ends up being near a 1:1 using the tool and doing maintenance. Riding mower is the only gas engine I have to mess with. Counting down the years until a more competitive battery riding mower is sold.
  - athenot 6y ago
    I did the same, with the EGO line of tools. It's so much more enjoyable to do landscaping tasks without the noise. I recently got the Ryobi riding mower, which is a glorified golf cart (lead-acid batteries) but works really well as a rough cut. When the blades are in action, it makes the sound of a box fan, and when the blades are off, it's totally quiet. For the tools that I haven't electrified (my Mantis tiller and Trucut reel mower), I stick with Honda engines. They are a marvel of reliability compared to the others. Only exception is my shredder which has a Kholer engine and does seem to be good too. All these start on first pull after a winter in storage.

_ph_ 6y ago

A fully charged Tesla could power my condo for a week at normal loads, in emergency mode probably a month. And of course, you would limit your charge usage to a safe margin. This isn't a plan for huge disasters, but would be a great thing to have for people who live in regions with pretty reliable power supply to bridge outages of a few hours to a day or two. And of course, if you have solar on the roof, the car could be the bridge almost infinitely long.

new_realist 6y ago
The average home draws a kilowatt, so two days for a 100 kWh car at 90% efficiency drawing from 80% to 20%. I agree that for the non-paranoid who don’t need to drive far to work the next morning, it could work out fine.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  Depends where you are looking. In Germany a typical household draws like 10 kWh/day. If you have a large family, then it might be more, but then you might have a second electric car. In any case, it would be an additional option for power failure, whether that is the right approach for a certain situation, depends on that situation.
  - brnt 6y ago
    We use 1-4kWh/day, and that sort of battery is very easy to find and cheap. Alas, panel installations do not seem to have a socket where you can just plugin a battery, they can only feed back into the grid. At least, not here (NL).
    - _ph_ 6y ago
      You should look around, here in Germany many companies are selling solar solutions with a home battery integrated. And of course, there it the Tesla powerwall, which is for the same purpose.
      - 6y ago

nicoburns 6y ago

This is much less of an issue for people who live in cities. At least in Europe, you can probably walk wherever you need to go.

Someone1234 6y ago

$400 generators cannot run large home appliances as the initial wattage surge during startup will overload them and cause the breaker to fire. For example, a fridge-freezer might need only 600 watts to run but will also need up to 2000~2500 watts to start. You'll struggle to find a $400 generator at 2K+ watts capacity, even if that load is only for ten seconds. Maybe "own-brand" generators from e.g. Harbor Freight, but would you trust it? And that's just for a single appliance, large space heating/cooling systems are even more problematic/spikey. Buying generators for your home is actually more expensive and complicated than many people realize. You'll quickly find yourself looking at $5K Honda inverter generators w/7K watt capacity even if that seemed overkill at the outset.

as-j 6y ago
I ran my whole little house+farm in Indiana off a 5kW (7.5kW surge) generator for a week, and then on and off during other power outages. It was 12+ years ago, so I don't remember exactly how much I spent, but I'm pretty cheap and didn't have much cash back then so I suspect it was about $500. It was a small household, no AC, but well pumps, fridges etc and it ran just fine.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bradstewart 6y ago
For a semi-permanent installation that can plug into your electrical panel, yes you're looking at a lot of money. But I have a Champion portable 3500 watt continuous (4000 watt starting) that was $397 that has no problem running my refrigerator, a few lights, fans, and a small window AC unit. I run extension cords to the specific appliances I need to power during an outage.
im3w1l 6y ago
Could you use a battery or capacitor to bridge the gap?
londons_explore 6y ago
A trick if you need it in a pinch to start a device with a motor from an undersized generator: Wait 10 mins for any heat/pressure inside the fridge to even out. Hook the fridge up to the (stopped) generator. Hold your finger on the breaker to force it to engage, even though the generator isn't running yet. then start the generator with the pullcord. It'll be very hard to pull, so you need both hands... As the generator splutters to life and accelerates, so will the fridge motor. Since both are accelerating slowly, the starting current is far far lower than would happen if the generator was already running when he fridge was connected. Also works for escalators, vacuum cleaners, blenders, angle grinders, etc. If the generator doesn't get up to operating speed within ~15 seconds, stop and give up or the generator coils will burn.

calaphos 6y ago

The energy a car uses is insanely large compared to e.g. a fridge. You could probably run it at least a month with a smallish 40kwh battery. Even running everything as normal probably uses less than a kw on average so electricity outrages would have to last multiple days to be a problem.

bonestamp2 6y ago
> electricity outrages would have to last multiple days to be a problem Ya, and that's pretty rare in most areas so it seems like a reasonable plan. I wonder if it's worthwhile doing a small "emergency" scale solar installation or if you may as well just do a full scale system once you've installed the rest of the infrastructure. Looking for opinions...
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  Typical PV installations won't power your house in a blackout (one during the day, that is), since they feed directly into the grid, and then your house receives power from the grid. Hence the market for something like the Tesla Powerwall, which reroutes all that enough that you can power your home from its battery, and charge it from the PV if the grid goes down (for a while - each Powerwall's battery is 13kWh, about 1/6 of a Model 3...) . But to your general question, at this point the panels themselves are a fairly small part of the overall cost, so I don't think most people would want to go small, if you're installing any kind of proper inverter system, make it big enough to cover your usage.

IkmoIkmo 6y ago

Sounds like an easy fix (e.g. stop depletion at 35%). And this could depend on the user as well. I live in the middle of the city, I really couldn't care less if my car ran out of miles in terms of an emergency situation, perhaps I'd configure it to 10%. My nearest supermarket is a 5 minute walk. There's 1 thousand neighbours, a hundred different stores, 3 police stations and a hospital within a 10 minute walk. Yes I can't drive to work but the power outage isn't likely to have a significant impact. There may be some edge case scenarios. Say I need to pick up kids from school on the other side of the city during a long-lasting power outage, no taxis, friends, teachers, public transport, bicycles etc available to help in these rare situations... but we're really not in the realm of everyday occurrences anymore at this point. And we shouldn't exaggerate either. A Tesla has 100 kWh. Average household uses about 30kWh per day. And that's not an emergency situation where you ration energy (e.g. not doing a big chunk of laundry once a week). Lighting a room for 10 non-daylight hours a day is about 1 kWh. A full iPhone charge is something like 0.02 kWh? You can charge about 5000 iPhones on a single Tesla charge. Stuff like this, connectivity, refrigeration, lighting, are probably key in an emergency situation. Power outages are not likely a big deal. Of course there are people who live in a rural area etc and need to be more self-sufficient. Very different story. But for 90% of tesla owners this probably will never be a big deal if capped at some minimum battery level.

natch 6y ago

Or solar panels. Solar panels are great. No moving parts. No getting robbed at a gas station during SHTF. Yes we all know the sun isn’t always shining, but with batteries in the picture, solar panels are even better. The car is just one more option that can be used in a pinch and wherever you are. The future is looking good.

coronadisaster 6y ago

> Meanwhile, you can buy a generator for as little as $400. Just don't buy it at the last minute (all stores run out in widespread power loss) and expect it to sit for years.