Prius generates power in Massachusetts snowstorm
by Jeremy Korzeniewski on Dec 25th 2008 at 7:45PM 
As anyone who watches the evening news would already know, the East Coast States have been hit hard with horrible winter weather over the last week or so. This snowy pounding has revealed a new use for the Toyota Prius, or likely any hybrid that recharges its batteries with its internal combustion engine. John Sweeney, a resident of Harvard, Massachusetts, lost power to his home for three whole days. That all sounds horrible, especially in such awful weather. Fortunately, Sweeney came up with a novel way to use his hybrid car by connecting a power inverter to his Prius' battery and using the hybrid as a generator. According to reports, Mr. Sweeney was able to run "his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan and several lights through his Prius, for three days, on roughly five gallons of gas." We imagine that proponents for a future electrical grid that gets power from hybrid and electric cars during peak hours are quietly smiling to themselves. Thanks for the tip, Corey!
[Source: New York Times via The College Driver]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Randy C. 9:24PM (12/25/2008)
Would you believe that as a sub function of their electric drive systems the eBox and the Mini-E can perform as a UPS. Both cars have a mode that will power your house in a pinch. All it takes is an electrical panel that can handle the power configuration.
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Chris M 11:11PM (12/26/2008)
AC Propulsion came up with a clever design that allowed the induction motor controller to also act as a battery charge controller and also as a power inverter putting out standard 120 volt 60 cycle AC.
With a 35 Kwh battery pack, it can run the average home for nearly a week - or up to a month if they conserve!
gorr 9:28PM (12/25/2008)
He's done a great job with his prius but could have done even better with a fcx clarity with 2 kilos of hydrogen without pollution and without noise and can even put the car inside the house for better efficiency contrary to the prius that convert 15% of the gasoline into electricity with lots of pollution and toxix gas around the house. The fcx clarity convert 100% of the hydrogen into electric output, just a power inverter can be necessary to add to do the jobs.
Please if your paid to write anti-hydrogen things just realize that you will be ending doing pro-hydrogen promotion as soon as normal slow pokes peopleswake-up in 100 or more years if they even wake-up one day. Toyota , gm, ford, etc are already forgotten managers and nobody will even remember any letters of their false names. They are drained-heads that sell crap and they are following banks, big-oil and goverments laws and projects and they have fool, betray, f*ck and laupf at their customers by selling for centuries pollution and toxix products validated each years by e.p.a. Nobody is able to breath for more then 30 seconds the exhaust output of any gm or toyota cars. If peoples are impeded by u.s goverment to buy, own, drive, look at hydrogen powered cars using the latest water electrolysers hydrogen producing machines, then it's because im a terrifying customer that negociate the entire actual car business all over the world and all manufacturers will vanish sooner then later including toyota, gm, 3m compagny, boing, us nation, europe, japan the pacific sea, nbc studio, sony, all state employees, all religions churchs, all that will vanish in the next year if somebody don't put on the market a car powered by a water electrolyser put inside the car. That's my answer.
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jpm 9:33PM (12/25/2008)
Do you realize that nobody reads your comments?
Scatter 5:09AM (12/26/2008)
Hey jpm, I do because they're so entertaining. e.g.:
"The fcx clarity convert 100% of the hydrogen into electric output"
ryan 5:39AM (12/26/2008)
gorr: It is official, you ARE an idiot. Congratulations. Please step forward to claim your prize. I am pretty good at rambling, but you my friend take the cake. You are work of art, my man.
Owain Ozymandias Buck 12:59PM (12/26/2008)
Hey, man, I hear you. I know it.
Um, say, I don't want to--I mean I'm just looking out for you--did you take your meds this morning? Yeah, don't want to forget that.
No, I hear you. I hear you man.
Take care.
wave54 2:25PM (12/26/2008)
@jpm
** Do you realize that nobody reads your comments? **
I can't imagine why anyone would waste the time to read the rantings of a complete and utter lunatic. If the kindergarden grammar and spelling weren't bad enough, the ridiculous and off-topic arguments are enough to make you want to drive an icepick through your skull.
Chris M 11:14PM (12/26/2008)
Gorr, you still don't have a rational argument. Using rude words and bad grammar doesn't help. Please realize that the universe doesn't revolve around you, and the rest of the world is not required to conform to your opinions.
The US government isn't impeding anyone from buying H2 powered cars, quite the contrary, the Bush administration has spent billions on H2 development. What is impeding H2 powered cars is the extraordinarily high costs of H2 fuel cells, the high cost of H2 storage, and the high cost and limited availability of H2 fuel. The death knell of H2 powered cars is the rapid development of cheaper more efficient plug-in alternatives.
Sorry, an "onboard electrolyzer" isn't going to work as the only fuel source. To run a fuel cell from an electrolysis cell would take 3x the electricity produced by the fuel cell. To run an IC engine on "electrolyzer gas" only would take 14 times the total power output of the engine!
texmln 11:18PM (12/25/2008)
Hey, that's great for the Prius! Most other cars you can actually DRIVE in snowstorms...
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Rick 12:38AM (12/26/2008)
I wondered how the Prius would do in the snow - or any other car with an electric drive motor. I figured the torque would give them problems and they would just be more likely to get stuck.
They seem to do as well as any other front wheel drive car over the last week where we've been snowed in.
...and my F150 got stuck and got pushed out by 4 Vancouver cops - (3 of them women) - and oh man I sprayed them good with those back wheels - can't do that with a Prius. :)
jharlan 1:48AM (12/26/2008)
Great story! I can't wait for electrical storage technology to catch up with our needs for petroleum free trarnsportation.
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Scatter 5:22AM (12/26/2008)
Using hybrid vehicles is an inefficient way to genertate electricity though and certainly should not be encouraged as a regular operation. For emergencies, fine, but not for daily peak loads. I don't think anyone is visualising smart grids as using cars to generate power, just to store it and then dump it back onto the grid as necessary.
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Tim 10:21AM (12/26/2008)
GM has said that Gen-1 Volt will have no "Out" plug.
Hello... GM? Anybody home?
Do you hear opportunity knocking?
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GM 11:42AM (12/26/2008)
NO!
Nobody knocking around here.
Herm 1:12PM (12/26/2008)
Why?, the Prius is a more efficient generator than a regular generator (special ICE cycle), it pollutes less since it is fitted with a catalytic converter, it has a buffer battery to deal with motor startup surges, it has a built in gas tank and when it gets low you just drive it to the gas station. Many people have fires refilling generators from gas cans.. 5 gallons for 3 days is nothing, I go thru 5 gallons in one night running my Honda generator..
Also the Prius will be a lot quieter than a generator, the racket you hear during a power outage is pretty loud, and then you have your neighbors that want to hook up an extension to your generator.
Of course you void your warrantee but I bet you could easily hook up 20kVA inverter to the main batteries, it would have to deal with the high voltage so it would not be a cheap $80 inverter.
12-26-2008 @ 5:22AM
Scatter said...
Using hybrid vehicles is an inefficient way to genertate electricity though and certainly should not be encouraged as a regular operation.
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Scatter 6:05AM (12/27/2008)
I'm not comparing it to portable generators, i'm comparing it to using centralised electricity generators. A gas fired power station is a much better way to generate electricity than a car.
I have no problem with people using them in emergencies, just not for day to day electricity generation!
Mike Z 1:27PM (12/26/2008)
It's kind of neat, though for the record I never see PHEVs or EVs feeding power back into the grid during peak times making any economic sense at all---the price margin to support it is not there.
Also, remember that a $20,000 Prius just replaced a $350 gas generator. While the latter is likely more noisy and polluting that the former, given the rarity that it would be used it seems acceptable.
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gorr 4:21PM (12/26/2008)
' the volt will have no out plug'
This is not surprising from a compagny own and operated by world banks and natural ressources cartel of wall streets. They don't even look at the profits of this compagny as long as it drive the natural ressources and financing of trading cars and light trucks. Why will they offer electricity to their customers on power outtages . They rob you of half your money over the years in silly gasoline use and polluted the planet. They rob other compagnies too with secret alliances with natural ressources cartels and world financing. This is a high financial-state compagny.
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gorr 4:41PM (12/26/2008)
I've just found batteries powered by water, this might be useful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zc51oUclAw
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