As many of you know the east (USA) was blanketed by an ice storm last week. Our electric was out for about 6 days. On the first day I (using a DC inverter) used my car for power instead of gas guzzling generator. It was a mere 700 watt inverter running on a 20 amp fuse. Imagine my surprise when I powered up a 52 inch tv, vcr, dvd player, computer (Couldn't get online though, no phone and didn't want to burn up cell phone minutes) and my halogen lights. The only things I wasn't running were my refridgerator and hot water heater. (I heat with kerosene and cooked with gas, camping gas, used less than 8 ounces, 240 ml, the entire week.) But that still amazed me. my car used less than a gallon of gas a day. It is actually cheaper to run everything that way then to pay my $120 per month electric bill.
I also discovered that I could run a battery charger and electric motor off the inverter. I will be experimenting in the next couple of weeks on running an alternator off of the electric motor (The motor runs at a constant 1200 rpms, which could be boosted by changing sprockets) powered by the inverter (after initial start-up by a battery) which is in turn posered by the alternator.
I still had about 400 amps left even when the motor was running. Plus there is no reaseon that I couldn't daisy chain more alternators and thus more inverters.
Anyone ever gave any thought to this. Like I said I am in the early stages of experimentation, but the results seem very possitive.
I would love to hear some feed back from some of you.
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Be Cool:
K_OS