John Sweeney powers his house with his Toyota Prius!!

The Prius has a new use, and it does not involve driving. The Harvard Press — which serves the Massachusetts town of Harvard as opposed to the university — reported that the car’s battery helped keep the lights on for some locals during the recent ice storms. The newspaper reports that John Sweeney, a resident who lost power, “ran his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan and several lights through his Prius, for three days, on roughly five gallons of gas.” Said Mr. Sweeney, in an e-mail message to The Press: “When it looked like we were going to be without power for awhile, I dug out an inverter (which takes 12v DC and creates 120v AC from it) and wired it into our Prius.”

greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com...

John Sweeney, of Harvard, Massachusetts, was among the many residents of Eastern Mass without power after a big ice storm hit on December 12th. Sweeney, an electrical engineer, saw his Prius as the answer. Using an inverter, he converted the DC power coming out of the car into AC power for his house. Though he couldn't run his entire house one his one car, they were able to get approximately 17 Kilowatt hours of energy. This was enough to power his refrigerator/freezer, television, lights, wood stove fan and accessories for a few days. Although anyone can use a regular DC power supply, like the battery found in a non-Hybrid car, but a hybrid is ideal.

jalopnik.com...

Im definately getting me one of those converters!! Could this to a revolution in power? Could we all use this to get paid BY the grid instead of paying into the grid?


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[edit on Wed Feb 18 2009 by Jbird]

It's just a good temporary solution to a problem and nothing more.

You can buy small personal generator that runs off of gas, and does the same thing a car would. I bought a small Honda generator for emergencies:
www.hondapowerequipment.com...

I am in the process of making it run off of hydrogen/water, so when I run out of gas, I can still keep it going.

I have a power inverter too, it plugs into my cigarette lighter in my truck, and I use to plug in and charge my laptop. There are other more powerful inverters that can power larger devices...

But in the long run, leaving your car running just to get electrical energy is a total waste. "Wear and Tear" will add up inside the engine. It's a good quick fix though!











[edit on 31-1-2009 by ALLis0NE]

Yeah but what if someone had two or three cars to run things? Or neighborhoods pooling such things in times of emergencies?

Yes I too have generators, but using the car regenerates the battery every time you drive it...