How to survive an ice storm power outage using your car!

Ice Storms are some of the worst bringers of Power Outages. They rank right up there with Hurricanes in just the sheer amount of damage to the infrastructure and power grid. It could take days and weeks for your power to come back on after these events.

Being without power can really put a damper on your life. Having to rely on flashlights to find your way around at night or even to just use the bathroom.

Having to keep your food from going bad by buying huge bags of ice or bringing in snow. Even charging your only means of communication, your Cell Phone, can become a hassle.

Not today. Without having to rely on a noisy gasoline generator, you can actually use a powerful engine you most likely already have in your posession: Your Car. As long as your car has gas, you should be able to power some household appliances. I have a solution for those of you living in Apartments and High Rise Buildings too!

Starting with this 800W Power Inverter with Alligator Clamps you will be able to (with your car in the on position) to power things like some lamps, your TV, cell phone chargers and laptops. Might even be able to keep your cable or satellite modems up and going for internet service.

Connecting this is really easy. Just like jumping a car battery. On the back of the interter you have two cables, a red and black cable. On the ends of these cables you will have a set of Battery Terminal Clips.

Step 1) Turn your vehicle on. Make sure it is running. Do not run anything else (heater, lights, AC, radio) as to give your inverter the most power. There's no need to rev your engine.

Step 2) Using those supplied clips, clamp the ground wire (black cable) onto the negative side of the battery (- side or black side). Do this first as to avoid grounding or shorting out your battery.

Step 3) Next, connect the positive cable (red cable) to the positive side of the battery terminal (+ side or red side) of your battery.

Step 4) Turn your inverter on. Wait for it to beep and go into diagnostic modes. Once it is ready, you'll see the lights turn on.

Step 5) Plug your appliance in to the supplied electrical outlet on the AC (Alternating Current) side of the inverter. This will provide you with usable 110/120 Volt AC power for most of your appliances.

Step 6) Do not exceed 800 Watts for this particular inverter. If you need a bigger inverter, I'll list some recommendations below.

And you're done!

800 Watts will run the following stuff without a problem:

2x - Lamps with Florescent Bulbs

1x - 55" LED LCD Television (32" TV's are most likely to be okay)

4x - 5W Cell Phone Chargers

1x - Laptop Charger

1x - Cable/Satellite Modem

--------

If you need to run more stuff, below are some examples of what you can run with each inverter:

1250 Watt Power Inverter (Largest inverter for 4-cyl engines)

*Use 4 AWG Cable (4 Gauge Cable) or larger. Anything smaller won't provide enough power.

1x - Small Refrigerator (Energy Star rated)

2x - Lamps with Florescent Bulbs

1x - 32" LED LCD TV

2x - Cell Phone Chargers

2500 Watt Power Inverter (Use with Medium Sized Vehicles Only; 6-cyl or 8-cyl Engines Recommended)

*Note: Use with 1/0 AWG Cable rated for 3500 Watts. Anything smaller won't provide enough power.

1x - Medium Refrigerator (Energy Star rated)

4x - Lamps with Florescent Bulbs

1x - Television of any size

4x - Cell Phone Chargers

1x - Laptop Charger

1x - Cable/Satellite Modem

1x - WiFi Router

1x - 12.5 Amp/1500W Space Heater (Only with nothing else running)

3500 Watt Power Inverter (Only connect to larger vehicles like Heavy Duty Trucks, Work Vans, RV's or cars with Multiple Batteries and big alternators. V8 or V10 Engines minimum!)

*Note: Use with 1/0 AWG Cable rated for 3500 Watts. Anything smaller won't provide enough power.

 

1x - Large Refrigerator

4x - Lamps with Florescent Bulbs

1x - Television of any size

4x- Cell Phone Chargers

1x - Laptop Chargers

1x- Cable/Satellite Modem

1x- WiFi Router

1x - 12.5 Amp/1500W Space Heater (Should be fine to run this constantly at medium setting)

1x - 1200 Watt Microwave (By Itself)

1x - Coffee Pot (By itself)

8000 Watt Power Inverter (Not recommended for Vehicle Use. Must be used with an external battery bank of Deep Cycle Marine Batteries [Information Provided Below])

*Use 4 sets of 1/0 AWG Cable to 4 strings of batteries.

1x - Most Everything (110V only, no 240V appliances)

Now this bad boy is going to do some serious power production. You'll be able to run your microwave, lights, televisions, Coffee Pots and a Space Heater without issue. Run a freezer and refrigerator too. The only drawback is the sheer amount of batteries you're going to need. You will literally need a ton of batteries for this to work right and for any length of time.

The batteries will be Deep Cycle Marine Batteries with a minimum of 8 of these for the 8KW inverter listed above. That will provide a ton of power and electricity for a sustained period of time.

To recharge them, you can use a Smart Battery Charger when the power grid comes back on, or using a set of Heavy Duty Jumper Cables (and a lot of patience) you can use your vehicle to charge those batteries back if the power grid hasn't come back on.

You can do the same thing with the batteries and smaller inverters as well, if you don't want to keep your vehicle running the whole time.

-------

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask in the comments below, or e-mail me Here.

Thanks!

-Joe Clark

The guy who knows stuff about this stuff.

How to Survive A Power Outage Blackout Using your Car

Now we're on to powering larger appliances like Big TV's, Coffee Makers, Microwaves, Space Heaters and Refrigerators from your car. In the field I work in, everyone always asks this question: "I want to run my whole house off of an inverter, what size inverter do I need?"

Let me stop you right there. Stop. Think about it. How much power does a whole house use? Better yet, how much power does my house use versus my neighbors house versus your house? Do our power bills match up exactly? Simple answer: No.

No house uses the same amount of power. Your 2500 Watt Industrial Microwave drinks power faster than my $100 Wal-Mart bought microwave. My 55 Inch LED LCD screen uses less power than your 40 Inch Plasma. Your neighbors house uses all standard incandescent bulbs while you have all CFL bulbs. You will consume less power than him with all of your lights on, than if he only turned on two or three of his lights. There's no definitive answer. It's all based on what you individually draw. On what your appliances use.

There's still hope! You could always buy one of these bad boys:

 

And about 20 AGM 12 Volt Sealed Lead Acid Batteries: 

And have yourself a fairly solid setup. But that's expensive. We're talking about running a few appliances from your car, since you don't have room to set up such a massive backup system. So; we're on to the How To portion. Most appliances you can plug in to your wall outlets, will be limited to about 1500 watts. By law some appliances have to be limited like space heaters: This means you can rest assured a 2000 Watt Inverter will most likely take care of that. The larger inverters (over 180 watts) will need to be connected DIRECTLY to your vehicles battery. Fortunately, there's no tooling involved. I'll get further into that in a bit. Again, most appliances prefer to run off of a Pure Sine Wave inverter. Anything with a computer chip or electric motor almost always requires a pure sine wave. Things with touchscreens need the pure/true sine to function. I recommend for appliances like space heaters and coffee pots, you utilize the following power inverter: It's the AIMS 2000 Watt Pure Sine Wave Power Inverter. It will be able to carry most of your smaller appliances as well as your larger appliances. Remember, you've only got 2000 watts of power here, so trying to run your 700 watt microwave and your 1200 watt coffee pot might be a little too much. You never want push an inverter that hard. Turn one off and run the other one. Here are the steps involved in hooking this inverter up:

1. Make sure your car is turned on and running. This is important as you don't want to drain your battery.
2. Open your hood and locate your battery. Remove any coverings from your battery terminals.
3. Attach the cables to the power inverter first. Make sure you attach Red (+, Positive) to the positive terminal on the inverter and Black (-, Negative) to the negative terminal. This is EXTREMELY important that you get this right or you risk blowing up your inverter and making a scare spark shower.
4. Utilizing the cables you've purchased (the ones below are compatible) clamp the red cable on the Positive Post (+) of your battery.



5. Now connect the black cable to the negative post of the battery or to a solid metal portion of your engine block. A small spark may occur. This is normal. Don't freak out.
6. Put your inverter IN your car. Not under the hood. The 6 feet of cable should be plenty.
7. Plug in an extension cable into one of the outlets and run it through the bottom corner of your car door.
8. Shut your car door gently but firmly to make a seal, without cutting the lines. Trust me, I've done this hundreds of times.
9. Turn on the Inverter and wait for it to start up. Should take a second to perform diagnostics.
10. Close your hood gently. Don't push it down all the way, just enough for it to latch.
11. Lock your door and roll up your windows. I'd hate for you to have your car go missing.

And congratulations, you've got power! You can use a multi-strip to plug in to the extension cord to run smaller appliances like cell phone chargers, TV's and laptops. This is great for running your refrigerator every couple hours or so. Only plug in your fridge after opening it. Let it run until it stops, then unplug it until you open it again. That way you don't have to keep it plugged in and you can use more power for other appliances.

Run another extension cord down to your sump pump in your basement. This inverter will run most 1/3rd and 1/2 horse power sump pumps no problem. This should keep your basement from flooding and save you the cost of that damaging event.

As a safety and security precaution, please do go check on your car every now and again. See if it's getting hot, check fuel levels and make sure it's ventilated. You don't want Carbon Monoxide Poisoning.

I know some of you living in major metropolitan areas and in apartment complexes might thing this is impossible and not valid for you. You're wrong. If you live in an apartment; this will work for you just as well, just a little differently. I will cover this in my next article. So stay tuned.

-Joe