It’s been hot and humid here lately and along with hat comes the severe thunderstorm watches and warnings. Thunderstorms have a nasty habit of taking out the power grid, sometimes for a few hours and sometimes for a few days. If this happens to you, are you able to run your fridge or window A/C unit even for a few hours at a time? Perhaps you want to turn on the TV and check the local news for updates or simply charge up the family’s mobile devices. If only you had saved up enough to buy that generator…but do you need one in the first place?
When we think of generating our own power during an outage, we almost always think of a gas powered generator. While these can be handy, there is a cheaper and easier way! If you have a car (not every prepper does, but every prepper should) then you already have a means of generating power. Your car has a 12VDC generator system built right in, all you need to do is convert that to 120VAC that your household runs on and you’re all set.
If that sounded easier said than done, it really isn’t. What you need is called an inverter. Inverters do just that, invert 12VDC to 120VAC. Connecting an inverter to the battery of your car can run almost anything in your house that runs off 120VAC. Keep in mind that your hot water tank and electric cooktop use 240VAC, so forget about those items. However, fridges, freezers, televisions and even window sized A/C units can be run from an inverter.
A lot of you would be understandably nervous about running your car for long periods of time. That is really not necessary to do. Providing power to appliances for a couple hours at a time will suffice for most situations. In 2 hours, one can cool a refrigerator, cool a room with a window A/C unit, get news information from television or radio, charge portable devices such as cell phones & tablets, recharge batteries for flashlights & more!
It’s easy to get confused when shopping for an inverter. There are Pure sine wave and modified sine wave, and any number of wattage ratings to choose from. There has been a lot of talk about the need for pure sine wave inverters for electronics. While long term issues may affect your electronics, most of them have built in filtering and will handle moderate use on the less expensive modified sine wave units. That said, wattage is a huge issue. While watt ratings can be found on labels on your appliances, there is special consideration for appliances with motors such as refrigerators. Look for the spec label and find the wattage rating. Take this number and multiply by 3 to find the surge wattage. Electric motors can use up to 3 times the running wattage at their start for a brief period. Buy an inverter that is rated a little higher than that number and you will be fine.
Your car battery is not meant to power items for a long period of time. Doing this will damage your battery beyond usefulness. To prevent this damage, run your car whenever you power appliances in your home. This means you are using the power being generated by the alternator and not the battery. Studies show that cars can run on idle for very long periods of time without severe damage to the engine.
If you’ve been concerned about power outages and don’t want to spend a lot of money on a portable generator, an inverter hooked up to your car battery is a great solution.
