Comment by NoZebra120vClip | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NoZebra120vClip | Hacker News Reader

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NoZebra120vClip

My friend has been making some rather major purchases lately, such as a portable air conditioner and a portable generator. She is elderly, retired, and lives with a younger fellow who's technically inclined. She's trying to hedge her bets around an inept landlord, bad house wiring and an unstable grid, and air conditioning that constantly breaks at inopportune times during the summer.

But I kept telling her that she doesn't want these complex mechanical things hanging around. I tried to impress on her (pace Technology Connections) how abysmal that air conditioner is going to be. I also tried to explain to her that if she gets a generator, she'll have to maintain it and fire it up once in a while, and that will not be easy. I explained that I have at least one other friend who decided that owning a truck and an inverter was way easier, because the truck has wheels that you can use to drive it around, the truck is easily maintained by the auto shop on the corner, and the truck will provide plenty of power just the same as the generator.

She really has a prepper streak, though, and I couldn't talk her out of it, especially after the sales lady got talking to her. She doesn't have a car and her roommate doesn't drive either, so I don't know how they'll transport/maintain these machines, but oh well.

I am constantly dismayed that there aren't more electric and PHEVs that are set up to serve as backup power supplies. It seems like such a simple and obvious thing to do. With a big enough network of these we could solve a big part of the storage problem for sustainable energy technologies.

It's being wasted by governments.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1SEfwoqKRU8

The hard part is that car batteries have limited cycles before they must be replaced at HUGE cost. For personal backup during power outages it would work, but I have a hard time believing that many car owners would be willing to put the wear and tear on their battery.

EVs use more than an average home's entire daily electricity budget to go 50 miles. In an emergency you could run your lights, fridge, and water heater for weeks on an EV battery. It's really not much wear and tear.

Cars are an immensely inefficient platform.

That seems like a use that Ford is already embracing with things like the lightning.

My comment was more in line with using cars as energy storage infrastructure. I think most car owners don’t want to use their car batteries as grid infrastructure.

You're right that a generator must be taken care of, but a truck with an inverter is very different from a generator if you plan to power something significant. The truck+inverter will probably keep your fridge and lights running, but can't power your whole house unless you get an oversized aftermarket alternator, which will cost more than the generator probably will (aftermarket car parts aren't cheap).

Come on, what you were suggesting was ridiculous and not a serious alternative. Buying and maintaining a truck is way more expensive than even multiple portable air conditioners and generators.

Furthermore, only expensive late model trucks even have high capacity inverters built in that are capable of running a separate air conditioner. The little portable inverters that plug into a 12V vehicle outlet can only do about 150W.

I like my standing air conditioner dammit. I can just roll it in the corner on the off season and don’t need to carefully clear a path to the storage closet and practice proper lifting form just to avoid injury using it. And it doesn’t have a chance to drip water everywhere when I take it out once a year.

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