Turning an old car into a powerful generator
When our electric power went out 2 months ago, I started thinking about
emergency power.  Our outage was unusually long, 2 days, because lightening hit a tree which fell on our overhead power lines to the house and pulled down all the lines, conduit, electrical boxes, etc.<p>Got a little electrical meter and showed that usually my office (I&#x27;m writing software) uses a grand total of 55 Watts, maybe 100 W if I do more, maybe 1000 Watts if I use the laser printer, boot my tower case Web server with several hard disk drives and an AMD 8 core processor, a little more in the kitchen for the refrigerator and occasional use of the microwave oven and toaster, a little more if I want to keep the winter heat, fueled by natural gas, going.  For the hours of an outage, I&#x27;ll f&#x27;get about running the air conditioner, oven, washer, and dryer.<p>Soooo, I can get by at 50 Watts and can do pretty well for a few days at peaks of 2000 Watts and an average over time of likely under 1000 Watts.<p>Okay, and I have a car!  Yup, a car has an engine and generator, both very well designed!<p>A little shopping shows that I can get a <i>box</i> that will output 3200 -- 15,000 (in steps of about 2000) Watts, a different box for each step of 2000, of US standard 60 Hertz (Hz, cycles per second) A&#x2F;C (alternating current, with a good approximation to the standard <i>sine wave</i>) at 120 Volts from any 12 Volt DC (direct current) storage battery.  Just clip two leads onto the battery and run extension cords from the output of the box and keep the electrical loads I mentioned running.<p>So, I could get a box that can output 4000 Watts ...!<p>And I have a car!  Hmm.  Soooo, back the car out of the garage, raise the hood, set the box on a front fender of the car, attach the two leads from the box to the car battery, start the engine, just let the engine idle, run the extension cords from the output of the box to my office, kitchen, and, maybe, natural gas powered furnace, and, ..., check the amount of gasoline in the car&#x27;s tank!<p>Since I don&#x27;t need much power, the car and the box would keep me going for a few hours or ~2 days of an outage.<p>Uh, ..., don&#x27;t have to be very inventive because there is something of an industry serving people with campers, trailers, <i>off-grid</i> cabins in the woods, etc. who do a lot with getting power from batteries, gasoline powered generators, etc.<p>In short, just clip two leads onto the car battery, start the engine, let it idle (the car knows how to keep the battery charged without overcharging), run the extension cords, and wait for the local electric power utility to get the outage fixed!<p>For the horrors of <i>back feeding</i> power to the whole house and maybe electricuting utility workers, etc., &quot;no worries, mate&quot;:  Are NOT trying to power the whole house.  Instead, are just powering a few loads with extension cords.  E.g., my office loads plug into the <i>female</i> sockets of a <i>power strip</i> which plugs into the wall.  Soooo, just unplug the power strip from the wall and plug its <i>male</i> plug into the female socket at the end of one of the extension cords.  Same for each of the microwave oven, toaster, refrigerator.  For the electric power used by the natural gas powered furnace, that will have to be a little more involved.  But, again, are just running the electric loads much like would on a camping trip.  &quot;No worries, Mate!&quot;.