I ran across this news article about a New Jersey guy who used an inverter and extension cords with his new Toyota Prius while his neighborhood was blacked out.

The article got me thinking, especially considering the ongoing gasoline hassles there after Sandy, whether hybrid vehicles are any more efficient at generating electricity than a non-hybrid vehicle since electricity generation is so critical to a hybrid car? Any thoughts?

You could put a heavy duty alternator on any car. Not unusual for people with RVs so they can recharge the RV battery.

There are also generators that you can permanently install under the hood of many vehicles for AC generation.

I do this. It works very well.

It is perhaps not what you might think though. The 12V auxiliary battery is fed by a DC:DC inverter from the 205V traction battery which in turn is charged by the engine.

I clip a small inverter to drive the house to the 12V battery and it runs until the 205V battery is discharged. The engine then starts and charges the 205V battery up again and cuts out automatically.

Just running the central heating boiler and freezer the engine runs for a few minutes, say 8-10 every hourish but it is only a 750W inverter I am using and the draw is minimal. I understand that the DC:DC inverter for the 12V battery is comfortable with 100A so no problem there.

The only trick is locking the car with the engine on. It needs two keys.

Have a Google around, look for 'Priups', there are a number of websites devoted to it so it is not out of the usual. I have read of people installing 205VDC to 230VAC inverters but I don't find that too attractive.

The best source of electrical power comes from the large generator stations which burn large qualities of Coal, nuclear etc.

Getting the electric power to everyones homes over large geographic areas is the main problem here.

http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-5/p8.html

The power grid frequency relaxation which was brought in a year or two ago, I suspect might be at the heart of the current power crisis.

The relaxation in the frequency stability requirements (load matching capacity) for the 60Hz US Grid was introduced to save money. The storm Sandy really shouldn't have caused such a widespread outage. There were apparently even problems with the Nuclear power stations (Level II emergency shutdowns for example) serving the north eastern seaboard geographic area, but this was not covered at all by the media.

As the 92 year old woman stated 'but why, Why is it taking so long?'. Why Indeed!

Continually being told 'it was the trees, what did the damage' is really just a lame excuse. The reprise should be 'I really don't care as a customer how you delivery the power, it really is not my concern as a customer, that is why you get paid for the service delivery'


The power companies at the heart of this crisis need investigation. If this happened in the UK, the power companies would be re-nationalised and the executives sacked after the public Judicial inquiry.

As this is not the way things are carried out in the USA, how about a Class Action Lawsuit to ensure that the power companies harden and make much more resilient the electrical grid distribution to inclement weather and other perturbations.

A Carrington Event sized solar storm event which could leave customers waiting for the electricity to come back on after a year or two could prove fatal for millions. A class action lawsuit might just save their lives in the future.

Yes, I think it would be quite a bit more efficient.

A conventional engine has to supply a lot of torque directly to the drivetrain, at a wide range of RPMs. There are many inherent inefficiencies in this arrangement.

In contrast, a hybrid vehicle is essentially a well-tuned genset. The engine is much smaller, since it only needs torque to rotate the alternator; and it when it runs, it is at a constant and efficient high RPM.

However: note that you can get a pretty sweet genny for the $10,000 differential.

State licensed electricians, not power company workers, are having to go house to house in the flood zones to ensure breaker boxes etc. are clean, dry, and operable.

There are far fewer available NY licensed electricians to do these home inspections than there are power line workers, who can be drawn from all over the country.

Fear of wrongful death or class action lawsuits in case of a preventable death(s) is part of the reason why this is a good idea.

It seems to me that this is a pretty innovative and effective way of providing emergency power. The Prius engine only needs to run intermittently, so gas consumption, noise and pollution is minimized. You already own and use the Prius regularly for normal activities, so no special storage requirements are maintenance are necessary to be ready for use in an emergency.

1,000W seems like it isn't enough to power essential systems. But I can't think of any reason why you couldn't hook-up a 2000W or even 3000W inverter to the battery. The auxiliary battery is rated 60Hr reserve at the standard 25A/Hr rate, which in my case would provide about 2 hours of power to the essential systems in my home (2 fridges, oil boiler/pump, TV, Phone, Internet, computers, cell phones, limited lighting).

I'm still not sure its worth spending the extra $10K to get a hybrid versus an equivalent-size gasoline-only econo-car. But it is another advantage to throw on the balance beam.

If you already have a Prius, the set-up described in the article is a neat last minute "MacGyver," but I don't see it as a substitute for more substantial preps. That car is a pretty expensive piece of equipment.

We put in a natural gas 8KW gewnerator, fully installed, for about 5K, and it provides a lot more power than the Prius set-up.

Portable gas generators in the 2 - 5 KW range are much cheaper. My old 5KW ran 12-14 hours on 5 gallons of gas. Prius or generator, you still need gas.

So IMO, the Prius power station does seem to be worthwhile as a primary source of emergency power. But first, get a real generator. Then, if you have a Prius and want a backup option, an inverter seems like a reasonable idea.

As always, the first thing to do is to calculate the critical amount of power you cannot live without, and size your preparations to at least cover this requirement. Then, if you can, add some power to cover other needs.

Thanks for the feedback. However, based on most of the responses, not sure if the gist of my question got through clearly. The question is not whether a Prius is a good substitute for a dedicated gennie (of course not). The question is if you're a typical two car family and one is a hybrid and one is a typical gasoline powered vehicle, is using the hybrid for emergency power like that NJ guy did more efficient than using the other car for power? I'm wondering if the hybrid is designed to produce electricity for less fuel per amp-hour than the alternator in a typical gas car?

One big conflicting factor for someone thinking of this choice may be whether you actually need to drive anywhere during the outage. If you do need to drive much, say, to check on friends or family members periodically during some disaster, then the fuel efficiency of the hybrid (compared to whatever other gas vehicle you may have) may tip the balance to using the gas vehicle for power and saving the fuel in the hybrid for driving around.

True HYBRIDS such as the Toyota and Honda models do supply torque to the drive wheels. Power to turn the wheels is delivered from the electric motors, the gas motor, or both depending on the amount of power needed and the state of battery charge. RPM's from the electrics and gas are fed into what Toyota calls the (IIRC) power split device which supplies torque to the wheels.