By John W.
I live in bright, sunny, and stormy Florida. Last year, was even a bit too stormy for my taste. We had two major hurricanes in our area that resulted in 5 to 6 day power outages and required us to purchase new refrigerated food after the first one. We became so feed up with the loss of electric power and the constant drone at night of our neighbor’s generators that I arrived in desperation at a new idea after the first major hurricane.
A little aside, both my wife and me own hybrid electric cars, both of the cars are equipped with large battery packs (202 and 274 volts DC) in the trunks for the electric drive motor and a small auto 12-V DC battery in the trunk for all the accessories. Before the next storm that hit I was ready, I ordered a 1250 Watt AIMS inverter from Inverters-R-Us, jumper cables, and a new deep cycle battery.
The next storm knocked out the power again but this time I was ready. After the storm cleared the area, I hauled my fully charged deep cycle battery out to my car parked in our circle drive. Opening the trunk I placed the deep cycle in the trunk, connected the jumpers to the small 12-V battery in the car and then to the deep cycle battery in parallel, connected the inverter leads to the deep cycle battery and ran an extension cord from the inverter in through the side window to the kitchen. The beauty of this situation is my hybrid car has an inverter that is used to charge the 12-Volt battery from the large battery pack in my car as long as I leave the key in the ON position with all my accessories off. I can close the trunk, lock all the doors and walk away, the gas engine turns on and off as needed to keep the batteries fully charged and the refrigerator and other appliances can always be on. The gas engine barely runs since it just needs to top off the 274 Volt battery (10-20% of the time) and my wife and I do not have to deal with the fumes and noise of a generator. We are extremely happy with this situation and are considering buying another inverter for her hybrid.
Thanks for helping us get through another storm.
John W.
Delray Beach, FL
