Around here people have auto-start generators and automatic changeover boxes that switch the house from mains to generator and (I suppose) disconnect the mains. At least one neighbor even runs a weekly test (automated – same time every Thursday) because one of his family has a life support system running on the house power.
If you don’t want to use auto-start, I suspect that there are manual change-over boxes, too.
And speaking of DC, as late the early 1960s a bit of Boston proper was still on DC.
We are talking a 3500 watt inverter to go from 12 volt DC to 110 volt AC. 3000 watts (which powers my furnace, fridge, and some lights,)at 12v is 250 amps. There are two reasons I don’t just get a small generator. 1) I don’t want to store gasoline in my garage. 2) My furnace does not run properly on anything but pure sine wave AC. The only portable generators that deliver that are Honda, and they are too expensive.
Prius 12V battery is optimized for longevity, not for high-currents or capacity
it is a fragile animal, which should not be charged or discharged with more than 4 Amps of current
exceeding the current limits will damage the battery
moreover, if you care to check, the battery has a label specifically telling not to exceed this current
so, 12V -> 110V off Prius idea is dead in the water
still, Prius has a “traction” high-voltage battery, which is indeed for high currents, but converting from 238 Volts or whatever it operates will be a non-trivial task
moreover, discharge traction battery too much and vehicle will not be able to start the gas engine, as it is the one in charge for ICE startup
That’s true, but they haven’t figured out how to make a 100% efficient inverter yet so you need to figure 10% higher input current to account for the conversion efficiency if your load is running 3000W.
The biggest issue will be simultaneous start-up of large inductive loads…
The refrig motor might need 10 amps at 115 VAC to start and 3 amps to run so, including inverter loss, you would be pulling about 30 amps from the 12 volt starting battery. That would not last vary long depending on the condition of the battery and then the car might not start. The hybrid battery is a 200 volt 6.5 ampere hour nickel metal hydride used to assist acceleration, so that would not last long either for inverter duty. Cars with large lithium ion battery packs would be better suited for something like this.
There may be more to consider than amps and voltage. The AC inverters I have seen convert DC to square wave AC which might not work well with some machinery. Dual pole induction motors might not operate well without the sine wave current.
You can do this with a Tesla because it has a much bigger battery. And even then, you can’t do it for all that long.
From my experience, a Prius is good for about 30 seconds or so on battery power IF you accelerate very gently and keep the speed under 30mph. That’s not enough to power anything for very long, especially after the losses you’ll incur in the transformer and the cable from the car to the fridge. You’re much better off just installing a whole-house generator or, if you can swing it, stick solar panels on the roof like the others said.
Both older MiMH battery and newer Lithium ones have similar capacity, so neither will last long, capacity-wise, but this is what Prius has a gas engine for
I would say NiMH technology proved it will sustain tens/hundreds of thousands of cycles, so I would not be concerned much about this aspect.
Yep, much bigger battery… and no ICE engine to back it up when it’s discharged.
When I used to run a vcr / camcorder service company, the battery manufacturers told us that a NiCd battery was rated for about 1000 complete charge/discharge cycles and the NiMh replacements were rated for 500 complete charge/discharge cycles, although the NiMh replacements had twice the ampere-hour capacity. No data was provided for partial charge/discharge duty. Elon Musk does sell lithion ion battery packs for storage use with photovoltaic systems and has proposed the massive use of electric car batteries, both in and out of the car for grid backup.
I’m not sure about the point you are making, but NiMH is used in Toyota hybrid vehicles for well over decade and it’s a proven technology.
It has nothing to do with cheap NiMH from the VCR/camcorder… and it is not inexpensive too.
I would be much more concerned about Li technology in cars, as it is definitely not yet proven for that long.
I am just stating what the manufacturers told us in training as authorized servicers of their products. We bought the replacement batteries from Panasonic. Not cheap! There were other brands available but they usually did not last as long or have the capacity of the Panasonic product.
The thing with a JD lawn mower is that the deck can be easily detached. Not so with other brands and can be a real pain in the neck. I would have simply designed it to drive the rear wheels on a platform to run the thing. But then can’t do that with chains on the wheels. Why would he have chains on anyway when the grass is green and no snow to be seen?
A PTO driven generator is not unheard of for tractors or lawn mowers with the PTO option. Then again like said, if you are that concerned about it, a natural gas home generator are quiet, fairly cheap, and reliable. They are designed for this.
So just thinking on a cost-benefit level, I paid $200 for my generator that has it’s own engine that can go anywhere. That’s all I need. So a PTO or this device would eliminate the $100 engine I guess. Why bother? And it will fit in my trunk, but a riding mower wouldn’t. Still I wonder why the chains? The only time I have used chains in the Summer is if I was plowing dirt with the dozer blade.
Lots of folks don’t have access to natural gas. I do, but I wouldn’t spend the money on an NG generator. If my electric service became so unreliable that I was burning out alternators I’d sue the heck out of the electric utility.
