Meanwhile, you can buy a generator for as little as $400.
And this could depend on the user as well. I live in the middle of the city, I really couldn't care less if my car ran out of miles in terms of an emergency situation, perhaps I'd configure it to 10%. My nearest supermarket is a 5 minute walk. There's 1 thousand neighbours, a hundred different stores, 3 police stations and a hospital within a 10 minute walk. Yes I can't drive to work but the power outage isn't likely to have a significant impact. There may be some edge case scenarios. Say I need to pick up kids from school on the other side of the city during a long-lasting power outage, no taxis, friends, teachers, public transport, bicycles etc available to help in these rare situations... but we're really not in the realm of everyday occurrences anymore at this point.
And we shouldn't exaggerate either. A Tesla has 100 kWh. Average household uses about 30kWh per day. And that's not an emergency situation where you ration energy (e.g. not doing a big chunk of laundry once a week). Lighting a room for 10 non-daylight hours a day is about 1 kWh. A full iPhone charge is something like 0.02 kWh? You can charge about 5000 iPhones on a single Tesla charge. Stuff like this, connectivity, refrigeration, lighting, are probably key in an emergency situation. Power outages are not likely a big deal.
Of course there are people who live in a rural area etc and need to be more self-sufficient. Very different story. But for 90% of tesla owners this probably will never be a big deal if capped at some minimum battery level.
You can buy a generator for even less, and it makes for a more robust emergency plan.
But... most people don't. The tool you have is always better than the one you don't. That's why phone cameras (and apps generally) are such a game changer.
If you own a tesla, you own a big battery and it goes where you go.
It would be quite nice to know I had quick, reliable power on tap that is regularly tested just in the normal course of my life.
Failing that, buying aviation gasoline (whether 92UL or 100LL) or using gasoline unpolluted with ethanol, a gasoline stabilizer, and exercising the generator for 2 minutes every half-year is probably time and money savings over cleaning the carb.
Cleaning the carb is also an easy sub-15 minute task from tool drawer open to tool drawer shut the second time you've done it. Give yourself an hour the first time maybe. A bottle of spray carb cleaner will last you a decade in all likelihood. I go through this every other year or so with seasonal equipment (lawnmower and snowblower) and it's easier to clean the carb when needed than to chase down and keep avgas on hand.
Riding mower is the only gas engine I have to mess with. Counting down the years until a more competitive battery riding mower is sold.
I recently got the Ryobi riding mower, which is a glorified golf cart (lead-acid batteries) but works really well as a rough cut. When the blades are in action, it makes the sound of a box fan, and when the blades are off, it's totally quiet.
For the tools that I haven't electrified (my Mantis tiller and Trucut reel mower), I stick with Honda engines. They are a marvel of reliability compared to the others. Only exception is my shredder which has a Kholer engine and does seem to be good too. All these start on first pull after a winter in storage.
* The battery is the same as my drills, giving me added battery capacity for the whole Dewalt system. Vendor lock-in...but they're a solid system. My dad's Dewalt batteries from 2012 finally just hit an unacceptably low battery capacity.
* I clean it after use but have had no other maintenance required.
* It's better for the environment
* It's silent when I'm moving across the yard. Having no idle sound is so nice. I actually value this very highly and am seriously considering buying all electric going forward. Last week I saw a guy mowing the yard with an electric mower. You could hardly hear it from 50 feet away.
As for riding, the deep cycle variants are getting competitive with gas powered but lithium is a ways off. fortunately with most deep cycle models batteries can be purchased in many places.
I have kept an old push gas mower around for high grass and light brush clearing a common area that is not regularly maintained. they still have more oomph than electric mowers.
The surprising win for plug-in electric is a small, cheap single-stage snow blower. For snows in the 1-4” range at under 25°F, it’s hard to beat the speed and convenience. I bought it just as a cleanup tool behind my “real” snowblower (a 2-stage can’t clear down to clean pavement), but I find I’ll often use it as the only blower I use for a light, fluffy snow.
If you think don't think a portable deal is a PITA, try something 10x the size.
My last encounter with it was discovering it was sucking down 1kw of power continuously (for at least 3 months, costing $200+) while trying to keep the coolant heated ... in the middle of the summer ... only to discover it had little-to-no coolant.
I found a family of snakes living in it.
I have no idea on the state of the battery, except for that it has one, so I suspect I'll be replacing that if I ever want to use it.
This is all stuff I don't mind doing, but that cuts into my free time that I'd rather be spending with my family.
All of this will cost you significantly more than a portable gas generator, but with yearly maintenance and monitoring, most generators perform just fine.
I work for an electrical contractor that is a General dealer, we do lots and lots of these.
In any case, it would be an additional option for power failure, whether that is the right approach for a certain situation, depends on that situation.
Mind sharing a company name or two? I do live rather close to the border.
My house in the UK is normally ~150 watts. 20 watts for a laptop, 20 watts for a light, 40 watts for the fridge, and the other 60 goes somewhere I haven't been able to trace.
Even running everything as normal probably uses less than a kw on average so electricity outrages would have to last multiple days to be a problem.
Ya, and that's pretty rare in most areas so it seems like a reasonable plan.
I wonder if it's worthwhile doing a small "emergency" scale solar installation or if you may as well just do a full scale system once you've installed the rest of the infrastructure. Looking for opinions...
You’ve got to also invest effort in taking care of the thing. Oil changes, don’t leave fuel in it, run it every two weeks.
1. You use ethanol free gas. This is more expensive, but it's also the same gas I run in all my lawn equipment so I generally have some around during the summer months. 2. If you plan on letting it sit for awhile use a fuel stabilizer in it.
But yea, a safe thing to do is to run it out of fuel, especially if you have ethanol in it, because that shit will kill the plastic parts in the carburetor if it sits. Once it's out of fuel, run it every month for awhile with some new gas in it just to keep it running and active. You'll want to run it long enough that you burn out any potential water in the oil, so let it get to normal operating temperature and run it for a bit longer and you should be good.
This is also good for electric start models which have a battery or capacitor that will need a regular recharge.
For example, a fridge-freezer might need only 600 watts to run but will also need up to 2000~2500 watts to start. You'll struggle to find a $400 generator at 2K+ watts capacity, even if that load is only for ten seconds. Maybe "own-brand" generators from e.g. Harbor Freight, but would you trust it?
And that's just for a single appliance, large space heating/cooling systems are even more problematic/spikey. Buying generators for your home is actually more expensive and complicated than many people realize.
You'll quickly find yourself looking at $5K Honda inverter generators w/7K watt capacity even if that seemed overkill at the outset.
It was a small household, no AC, but well pumps, fridges etc and it ran just fine.
But I have a Champion portable 3500 watt continuous (4000 watt starting) that was $397 that has no problem running my refrigerator, a few lights, fans, and a small window AC unit. I run extension cords to the specific appliances I need to power during an outage.
Wait 10 mins for any heat/pressure inside the fridge to even out. Hook the fridge up to the (stopped) generator. Hold your finger on the breaker to force it to engage, even though the generator isn't running yet. then start the generator with the pullcord. It'll be very hard to pull, so you need both hands...
As the generator splutters to life and accelerates, so will the fridge motor. Since both are accelerating slowly, the starting current is far far lower than would happen if the generator was already running when he fridge was connected.
Also works for escalators, vacuum cleaners, blenders, angle grinders, etc.
If the generator doesn't get up to operating speed within ~15 seconds, stop and give up or the generator coils will burn.
A generator would be ideal but if you already have the car it'll do in a pinch.
Just don't buy it at the last minute (all stores run out in widespread power loss) and expect it to sit for years.