Posts: 32,462
Threads: 3,127
Joined: Apr 2025
Reputation:
0
At my parents’ last house, they bought a generator, the kind designed for these outages. Fully integrated to both electric and to their propane tank. Presumably you could get one that runs off nat gas. At any rate, they never had to worry about gassing it up or stale gas. Programmed to start up once a month, to ensure everything was working OK.
Their place had frequent short term outages of just a few minutes, so it was more of annoyance than risk of tossing the fridge contents. But the whole house had power less than 30 seconds. I would not want to be fiddling with the car and cables at midnight. Assuming the car is even home when the outage occurs.
Posts: 19,359
Threads: 1,726
Joined: May 2025
Reputation:
0
The reports that I've read on the Chevy Volt forums is that the users who powered their homes with the Volt did so for days and used very little fuel. The difference between using the car versus a generator is the battery. The generator runs continuously regardless of your power usage. The car runs off of the battery until it's depleted. On the Volt you can turn the car on and put it in Hold or Mountain Mode and it will turn the motor on periodically to recharge the battery up to a point. If you're that concerned about it though, you'd probably be better off getting a Tesla Powerwall and some solar panels.
Posts: 31,028
Threads: 2,688
Joined: May 2025
Generators are also awful polluters, like most yard equipment, but that stuff isn't used (usually) for hours on end.
Posts: 16,789
Threads: 722
Joined: May 2025
Reputation:
0
I’d guess that hooking up your Prius or Volt to power your house would automatically void its warranty; if not for the entire car, at least for its drive battery.
Posts: 16,917
Threads: 1,500
Joined: May 2025
Reputation:
0
thought of this thread when i saw the following posted on the Facebook Volt group page today:
Volt to the rescue. Again. Thunderstorms knocked out power to our neighborhood from 11pm to 5am overnight. Put a 1000W sine wave inverter in the Volt, and powered LED lights, refrigerator, networking, and security lighting and camera system. Volt was on the whole time, just left it in "N", with parking brake on.
Used about 11 miles of range on the GOM. I have a 5KW solar system, which obviously can't help at night, but... Volt has already recharged the 11 miles from solar this morning
