Hurricane vs EV... I can't power my home with the Tesla because it is in the body shop... Bolt to the rescue!

[Jjrss]

We went 4 days back in 2008 without power due an ice storm that took down power lines. We stayed in the house as we had hot water (gas) and cooked on a grill. But one of our neighbors with a GENERAC whole hose generator thought it was nice to turn on all his outdoor holiday lights at night while we were all in the cold with candles and maybe a fireplace.

After upgrading my home HVAC to a heat pump with secondary propane furnace, I've been thinking of getting one of those generac propane generators. Nothing else in the home uses propane, and my 250 gallon tank barely gets touched unless the heatpump goes through a dethaw cycle.

Would be a good winter storm car charging backup... I commute 90 miles a day (45 both ways).

Last year in WA we got ~4 feet of snow. Luckily all our power lines are under ground near us.

 

[Fourdoor]

At the start of my test I plugged in the fridge to the wall to cool it down, and froze 16 half liter bottles of water and put them in the fridge section… this is the same thing I would do in preparation for an expected power outage. I then started the test by hooking the fridge up to my battery pack via the 1000 watt full sign wave 12 VDC to 120 VAC inverter.

I expected my test to run for only a few hours, so I chose to take data every 15 min getting a DC Voltage, AC voltage, and DC amps reading each time. After 6 hours of running I had to pause the test because we had errands to run, so I shut off the inverter and plugged the fridge into the wall. I resumed the test, the next day expecting it to end at any moment, and ran for another 3 hours before pausing to do some shopping. Resumed that evening for another 3 hours and paused for the night. At this point I have been running the test for 12 hours, way longer than I expected it to run.

The next morning, being sick to death of taking readings every 15 min for the first 12 hours of the test I decided to just take a reading each hour, and resumed my test. Five and a half hours later the alarm sounded on the inverter because it was no longer able to maintain 120 volts on the AC output, and I concluded the test. This was a mind boggling 17 and a half hours after starting the test run.

Pack voltage with no load at the start of the test was at 12.9 Volts

At the 1 hour point 12.6 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 140 Watts.

At the 2 hour point 12.6 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 160 Watts.

At the 3 hour point 12.6 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 101 Watts.

At the 4 hour point 12.5 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 101 Watts.

At the 5 hour point 12.5 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 132 Watts.

At the 6 hour point 12.5 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 132 Watts.

PAUSE for errands.

At the 7 hour point 12.4 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 215 Watts.

At the 8 hour point 12.3 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 216 Watts.

At the 9 hour point 12.3 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 117 Watts.

Second Pause.

At the 10 hour point 12.3 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 96 Watts.

At the 11 hour point 12.2 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 128 Watts.

At the 12 hour point 12.0 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 162 Watts.

Third Pause for over night.

AVERAGE WATTS OVER FIRST 12 HOURS = 142 WATTS

At the 13 hour point 12.0 VDC, 120 VAC.

At the 14 hour point 11.8 VDC, 114 VAC.

At the 15 hour point 11.5 VDC, 111 VAC.

At the 16 hour point 11.5 VDC, 110 VAC.

At the 17 hour point 11.2 VDC, 110 VAC.

Thirty min after this reading an alarm started sounding on the inverter, when I checked the readings they were 10.3 VDC, 101 VAC. At this point I concluded my test.

Later,

Keith