Man Powers Home With Toyota Prius

Here we have another story of American ingenuity, thank you:

After a crippling snowstorm slashed across the Northeast and Midwest this holiday season, a Harvard, Mass., resident named John Sweeney came up with a clever method to keep the lights on during a long power failure.

Sweeney hooked his Toyota Prius up to an inverter and powered his home for three days. The Prius’ battery packs a lot more punch than a standard car battery, and every 30 minutes the internal combustion engine kicked in to recharge the battery.

Sweeney couldn’t keep his entire house and extraneous appliances running, but he did power his lights, refrigerator, freezer, stove and TV from the vehicle, and those appliances only used about five gallons of gas over the course of the power outage.

One benefit of proposed plug-in hybrids like the upcoming Chevy Volt is the ability for their power to feed back into a home’s grid when not needed to help cut down on energy bills. We imagine plug-ins could all become de facto generators in situations like this.

Toyota Prius Powers House During Snow Storm (Obsessable.com)