I have a 2.2 kW Honda that does have an inverter, is absurdly quiet, and sips fuel. I also have an extended fuel tank for it so it can run overnight. All of that, plus adequately sized extension cords, was somewhere around $2500. It's also still a pain in the ass to set up when it's necessary, but at least I get to run fridges, freezers, LAN, TV, fans, etc. I also have to do monthly load tests, source ethanol-free gas, rotate gas supplies, and practice running extension cords to everything so I'm not confused in the dark. Lest you think all of this is unnecessary prepper beliefs, I live in Texas (for now - about to move), and it has been required far more often than I'd like.

A standby generator that can run an entire house will run you $15-20K with installation, and that assumes you have natural gas plumbed to your house already. If you don't, you'll have to bury a LPG tank, or have an unsightly blob in your yard.

This feature of the Lightning is the major draw for me, and I am seriously considering it once they've proven themselves for a few years.

Convert your generator to run on propane. In my experience, propane tends to be more available during natural disaster power outages than gasoline. And it's way less messy. But make sure you have a sufficient number of tanks in advance. Those tend to disappear when there's an outage.

> practice running extension cords to everything so I'm not confused in the dark.

Have an electrician install an inlet outside your house along with a transfer switch:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Reliance-Controls-10-Circuit-30-...

Instead of the transfer switch, your may also (depending upon your local code) be able to go with a simple lock out device in your panel like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Generator-Interlock-Kit-Breaker-Panel...

If I had a bigger unit (Honda also makes a 3000 watt and 6500 watt model), or just had two of these in parallel, it would be worth consideration.

Re: transfer switch, again if I had a bigger unit I'd consider it, but I can run so few loads it didn't seem worthwhile. This is basically to keep food from spoiling, internet/TV going, and fans so we can sleep somewhat comfortably.

https://www.championpowerequipment.com/product/200994-4650-w...

I did the inlet and cutover switch install myself as well. I've got dual sub-panels but the circuits I wanted to power were all in my basement, so I've got it wired up for my kitchen fridge, a basement chest freezer, basement sump pump, and a few light and electrical outlet circuits. I can't run my normal HVAC, but I can run a portable HVAC I purchased that's sufficient for my basement in a pinch.

I was in Miami for Hurricane Andrew and have some fun stories about generators, extension cords, and siphoning gasoline out of our cars.

Meanwhile my uncle on Long Island is having a whole-house generator installed this summer, including burying a propane tank. I think he's spending something like $15K on that.

--- That actually doubles your risk of failure, better to go with one big one.

I have a healthy amount of solar but don't want to buy batteries (even in truck form).

The solar needs AC from the mains for some reason.

Is there some way to hookup a small generator to make the solar happy and then use the solar for power? (Yes, I'd have to disconnect everything from the grid.)

Let's assume that I don't try to use too much power. Will the solar be damaged if I don't use enough?

Something will be damaged or the whole system will shut down. Typically grid-tied systems do not have the ability to dump excess power or throttle down panels to provide partial loads. You would be better off installing a proper battery-backed inverter, but depending on the wiring and design of the existing system, that might mean replacing everything except the panels, which is likely quite expensive.

I have a healthy amount of solar but don't want to buy batteries (even in truck form).

The solar needs AC from the mains for some reason.

Is there some way to hookup a small generator to make the solar happy and then use the solar for power? (Yes, I'd have to disconnect everything from the grid.)

Let's assume that I don't try to use too much power. Will the solar be damaged if I don't use enough?

It's not the same, but my parents back in India have a few Lead acid batteries hooked up to an inverter to supply backup power when power outage occurs (about once a week). They have been doing this for decades now. I'm just wondering why a larger scale version of this with LFP batteries and may be solar panels to charge them wouldn't work where you are..

The ROI on a new one would still be extremely long, but it starts to become more justifiable as features like this are added. If Ford makes an electric version of the Maverick - their small truck - it'll be a very easy decision, assuming it can still power a house.

Personally I don't tow anything, I just use the bed to haul stuff, so I would probably see a minimal loss of range. Also, inter-city travel is unlikely to be affected as long as you can get back home at the end of the day.

[0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/2022-ford-f150-lightning-...

That's not bad.

> Also, inter-city travel is unlikely to be affected as long as you can get back home at the end of the day.

Agreed, but stuff like camping and boating is going to be limited, which is too bad because a giant battery would really open up the options for camping.

This is a truck for someone who has a commuter sedan and a Toyota Tacoma or Honda Odyssey parked in their garage somewhere the houses cost a million bucks and there are more Black Lives Matter signs than black people, i.e. the kind of person who would have bought a crew cab half ton a decade ago if daily driving one didn't make them feel like a backwards hick poisoning the climate.

I'm sure it will "do truck stuff" as well as any other F150 (OEMs don't play fast and loose with the reputation of flagship products like the F150) but the range will obviously be subject to the same tradeoffs as every other EV. but these are demographics that break out in a cold sweat at the idea of cramming five people in a compact car. They're gonna use the thing at a fraction of it's capability. Towing 10k will be a once a year thing if that. That should be fine for now as most buyers will just want to tow to home depot or the boat ramp.

The range will creep up over the coming years as batteries get better until finally the EV truck also makes sense guy who's towing the camper cross country.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Antisemitism_and_Th...

So, conveniently, the F-150 is a tested, self-enclosed array of batteries :).

The average north american home has several kilowatts of connected loads, not to mention equipment that must run such as heating/cooling, large fridges and myriad electronics.

Banks of lead acid batteries can indeed work but they are large, may leak and always require some sort of hazard protection. You can get around all of this in a country with lax standards but are unlikely to do so in the west.

I would not go around recommending anyone to buy Lead acid battery banks today. I'm in the midst of getting rid of the ones at my parents' too.

However, I found these LFP batteries where I live - NL for about 1K Euros [1] . They are 2.5KWh. Two or three of them and an inverter ought to be a good as reasonable backup for an American house dont you think? LFP batteries dont catch fire like the Li-Ion ones tend to. No worries about oil maintenance. They come with 10 years of warranty. What is a downside to this that I am missing?

[1] - https://greencell.global/en/lifepo4-batteries/4097-lifepo4-b...

But they can withstand many more cycles than Li-Ion without wearing out. If you can afford LFP, they seem ideal for a home backup situation.

And is made to work well with this kind of inverter: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-6-5k-off-grid-inverter-6500ex...

(They have a smaller 3 kw inverter for about half the price)

Also watch Will prowse on YouTube.

Here's a nice overview of setting up a 30 kwh battery and inverters to charge/use them: https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/48v-complete-system-bluepr...

We don't have many grid outages here, but the ones that happen tend to happen around large weather disasters. Commercial areas, often with DCFC tend to get restored a little more quickly than more distant suburban residential power and tbh, most people aren't driving that much during those periods anyway.

Would be cool if a mass grid failure resulted in a callout for electric cars to drive over to a community centre or whatever.

Not even close to bottom-of-the-barrel. In fact, pretty standard, and can last forever.

>requires a lot of maintenance.

Lots of maintenance? Like what, changing the oil and plug once a season?

>If you don't, you'll have to bury a LPG tank, or have an unsightly blob in your yard.

You seem to have very particular tastes about "sound" and "looks", so go ahead and spend $20k for a backup system. But don't try to tell people it can't be done for far cheaper, because I've been running my house on a backup system with a $1000 Generac portable coming up on a decade. The generator I replaced was from the 70s.

Maintenance requirements are usually spec'd by runtime; mine is oil change at 20 hours for break-in, then every 100 hours. It's not difficult, but it's annoying. Beyond that, if you aren't running it at least quarterly (I do monthly), you're risking it not starting when you need it. Not to mention the aforementioned fuel requirements - ethanol free is sometimes hard to find, and you need to keep a mental note of when you bought it so you can rotate fuel supplies.

It comes down to personal taste and willingness to be loud in your neighborhood, sure. If I'm going to spend the money on backup power, I first and foremost don't want there to be any question about its reliability. I trust Honda's engines and electronics. I also don't want to piss off my neighbors, or make myself an easy target of theft, so it needs to be as quiet as possible.

But that was it … installation is nothing more than installing a 100amp breaker in your panel … and the $30 lockout tab.

Homeowner work.

While I am comfortable running new branch circuits and panels to code, I suspect most people are not.

[0] https://blog.networkprofile.org/generac-rg027-install-27kw-1...

Generators are a giant PITA. You need to use and maintain them regularly or they're going to be broken and filled with stale gas when you need them. For something you only use once a decade or so, that's a big ask. Better to have something you use daily, like your truck, so you know it works.

A half charged vehicle is no problem during a grid failure. That's 150 miles. An EV gets better mileage in a traffic jam than it does at highway speeds, so it's a true 150 no matter road conditions. Also remember that you don't have to find a fast charger -- EV's can be trickle charged off a normal 115V outlet, and that's usually easier to find than gasoline during a crisis. All the gasoline stations around me last week either had multi-hour lineups or were out of gas.

You don't live in snow country. While winter reduces ICE vehicles' range as well (this isn't meant as a slam against EV's), you may lose 40% of your EV's range just due to cold weather. A multi-day power outage could easily drain what remains.

Also, ice storms cause a lot of power outages. This isn't a hypothetical for large parts of the country; power outages are more frequent in the winter.

Personally, my response is a variation on "do nothing". I have propane around for cooking and heating water, and I have a clean-burning kerosene heater to help keep the house warm-ish if we can't run the furnace for an extended period of time.

I'm not sure why anyone is making EVs without heat pumps - that is something Tesla pioneered years ago - and seems to be the obvious route to take for heating.

Instead, I have a whole house natural gas generator. No gas to go stale. It powers my entire house. And it costs similar to this.

Maintence: Every 2-3 years, it needs an "oil/filter" change.

I have never had one before this house, but wow it is nice. We seem to be on some flakey power lines, we have lost power ~8 times in the previous year, ranging in duration from 1 hour to 2 days.

You are using your backup generator a lot, you need to seek out the maintenance schedule for your model and ensure you are following it!

In my area, Generac [1] and Kohler [2] are what everyone uses for their homes. The maintenance schedules are much higher than every 2-3 years. Good luck :)

[1] https://www.generac.com/service-support/faqs/maintenance-kit...

[2] (Page 60) https://resources.kohler.com/power/kohler/residential/pdf/tp...

I'd be more concerned about things nesting in it than anything else.

* the oil typically needs changed every 100 hours of operation. That was fine, until an ice storm knocked out power for 11 days to my parents house.

* if you live in an earthquake zone, most likely after a major quake the gas lines will be down.

This seems suspect to me. The ones I've seen call for it once a year or every 24 hours of run time.

The Onan/Cummins LP generator in my RV requires an oil change every 150 hours or annually, whichever comes first with the first oil change after 50 hours.

However, engine oil these days is very high quality and should last longer than a year.

0: https://youtu.be/T-yt5a1cWd4

I'm shocked at how many people overlook this. I've had the same experience, as our "crisis" situations tend to be combined with widespread gas shortages. EVs are surprisingly convenient during most of those.

It wouldn't be fun to depend on a supercharger or other DCFC during that time, though... but maybe not significantly worse than gas even then. I've been in those gas lines.

There are cities where pretty much all gas stations are literal holes in the ground from being blown up. On the other hand most apartments do have electricity and the only vehicles on the road are military or EVs.

This is our strategy in Cambridge, MA with some overhead supply lines, but it’s very rare to have an outage over an hour [the last one I recall was about 10.5 years ago]. We bought a few extra flashlights after that one.

My trick is that, instead of buying a gas or battery leaf blower, I just drag my generator out to the street and plug in a leaf blower to clean up my grass clippings. I do it often enough that I know my generator still works.

i'm sure it was way more expensive than a generator, but a generator doesnt generate daily profit for the next 20 years either...

PS i've also done 3 day camping trips in my EV so if i needed AC i could have it any time.

As a second/town vehicle, a cheaper EV sounds great for conditions I can't use the e-assist cargo bike.

Source: Have a whole house gas generator

I'm not going to be a 1st year buyer of a Lightning but I'll probably be a buyer as soon as the newer batteries start getting introduced.

The $30 lockout tabs are simple, safe and code-compliant.

Nothing janky about them and also no unnecessary complexity.

For just the generator, yeah.

Then you need cans for the fuel and somewhere to store it. And you need to maintain that fuel by periodically pouring it into a vehicle and refilling the cans. Even with preservative, it's good to do that yearly. If you don't own an ICE vehicle, I guess you have to find a neighbor who does, and who won't be suspicious that you're offering them a bunch of gallons of free gas?

And even with all that, it still needs oil changes and test-runs, or it's liable to not work when you need it.

And even with all THAT, most generators that large absolutely guzzle fuel. Ten or twenty gallons might get you a day, maybe two? And that's a LOT of fuel to store, when you consider having to refresh it.

If you can just use the vehicle you already own, and the battery pack that you already charge, ALL those concerns go away. You've got tons of power. It's already proven to work. It's already wired into the house. And the little maintenance it needs, you're already doing because it's your daily driver.

This approach is not without its downsides -- if you go out to run errands, the house loses power until you return -- but the benefits may outweigh that for a large number of people.

A quick note: It should cost more than $20. When fridge compressor cycles on, it can draw up to 20A. Extension cord wire gauges are based on 1) length and 2) amperage and depending on home layout, you'd might get away with a 50 foot 12 gauge cord ($40). If it's 100 feet, you'd want 10 gauge ($100+). It'll vary by cord and refrigerator, and there are many extension cord sizing guides freely available.

can being the operative word - the LRA (Locked Rotor Amps) of a typical fridge/freezer's compressor might be that high, but starting current is not unless something is hideously wrong. I've never metered mine, but I have ran three fridges and a deep freezer off of a 2200/1800 (start/run) watt generator with zero issues, and plenty of headroom left. The generator has tiny dip when the compressor kicks on, and then it jumps back.

You are correct that sizing cords is very important, though, and something that most people don't do. Also if you have a roll-up extension cord (the kind with multiple outlets at the end), it's vital that it is completely unrolled when in use, so the cord doesn't heat itself.

I run 12 gauge splitters --> 14 gauge for individual loads, but I also know exactly how much those loads are pulling, and have verified it's within safe limits for the wiring.

It's worth remembering that a house's wiring is almost always 12 gauge, and is rated for 20 amps assuming the correct outlet.

I used 12 gauge in my house on purpose but sadly I don't think that's the norm.

Notably:

* Kitchens must have at least two separate 20 amp circuits (for use for small appliances on countertops, traditionally) for general use

* Fridges need a dedicated 20 amp circuit

* Microwaves need a dedicated 20 amp circuit

Beyond that, yeah, absolute minimum is 15 amp throughout the house.

The code does seem to get a bit better over time.

Folks, spring for one or two good 50+ ft extension cords. You don't need a lot of them and the cheap ones are bad for your equipment and your safety.

  > wasn't just safer but also visibly more powerful

I personally argued with the guy who installed my EV charging station, because I wanted thicker wire and was willing to pay for it. I don't want wires heating up, I don't care if it's code compliant it is energy wasted that could go into my EV. And the thicker wire is not much more expensive nor difficult to work with.

I can't help but face-palm at this sort of hand wringing. It might not be "right" but it works.

If the 16ga cords regularly melted people wouldn't buy them in those lengths, they wouldn't fly off the shelves, they'd get stocked in lower volume and you'd see less of them on the shelves.

The fact that they don't melt themselves even when used with fairly substantial appliances (large-ish homeowner sized table saws and compressors, all manner of portable power tools) is a testament to how conservative the official recommendations are.

>and was shocked to discover my lawnmower wasn't just safer but also visibly more powerful, which I didn't think was possible.

Voltage drop

I'll grant you a contractor's usage of any tool is much higher than a typical homeowner's, there's still no reason not to get the beefier cord. Buy once, cry once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_q-xnYRugQ

Your assumption is that your battery is going to suffer enormously. That's probably not the case. Batteries do relatively well if you don't stress them with enormous loads. Relative to driving the vehicle, powering your house is a very light load. Ten days is quite long. You won't be driving that long on a single charge for 100kwh battery.

And it would of course be highly unusual to be running your house for extended periods of time; at least not unintentionally. And even then it would not be worse than simply driving the car to the maximum range. You might want to drive to a supercharger after a few days. If they are still functioning of course. And if things get that bad, most petrol stations will also have issues powering their pumps.

But if that somehow is a regular thing in your life, invest in some solar panels instead of a generator. That should cut down on the running cost for that truck as well.

The kind of idiot that wants to generate income through arbitrage by storing energy in his EV when prices are low and selling it back to the grid during peak hours when prices are high?

Don't forget the kind of person buying this kind of vehicle today also probably has a multiple car garage.

(Before anyone brings up the Tesla battery in Australia, that is an edge case where the grid needed more capacity for grid stabilisation. Almost anywhere where you would find one of the electric pickups from the article would also have a stable enough grid that you cannot replicate that with the car battery.)

3000 cycles is already 10 years at just under 1 cycle per day. Adding an order of magnitude more cycles by cycling between 75% and 25% gets you a century. Something else is going to die first.

5kwh for $1500 with 3000 cycles is $.10/kwh. I'm oversimplifying here as the real cost is higher, but the arbitrage opportunity only has to offer ~$.20/kwh to be generally profitable with a battery like that.

Some time of use plans are already there daily. I don't think the person taking advantage of this sounds like any "kind of idiot".

FWIW, Ford has sold out of these for the next 2 years, so they must be doing something right.

But honestly I don't know, it's not something I've looked into. If prices become increasingly variable coupled to demand and impact of generation source at time of use, I imagine it could be quite lucrative and that might be a useful incentive to get effectively decentralized peaker plants in the form of grid-tied residential batteries caching cheap cleanly-sourced electricity.

$32 / MWh wholesale is an arbitrage that could be done on many days in CAISO today. I don't particularly think that people will use that much of their battery or do so every day of course but it does show that it's not an orders of magnitude implausible scenario either.

So I can do the electricity math for myself, but not for others.

$6k to connect a 100kWH+ battery to their house is a drop in the bucket to the $100k they paid for the vehicle, and compared to buying the batteries outright as a home backup option.

It’s the killer app right now for EVs and homes with solar. A Tesla Powerwall is like $13k for 10kWh. You’re getting something 10x capacity at a fraction of the cost.

Buy a nice server rack and three of the aforementioned and there's your "powerwall" for less than half the price.

Also:

> Tesla’s residential energy products will be sold as a bundle and will exclusively work with one another. This means that Tesla Powerwalls will not work with other manufacturer’s solar panels. Additionally, Tesla will not sell any of its Solar products without a Powerwall,

This one, I already have. I paid more than that for two Tesla powerwalls. I use them for load shifting. I charge at night when electricity is cheap and use them during the day. They already paid for themselves in savings. Oh yeah, no more power outages either.

How? Where do you live that electricity is that expensive during the day and arbitrage rate is that high to create a thousand dollars a year in savings? I run my AC 24 hours a day at fifteen or more degrees below outdoor ambient on a decent sized house, with appliances that are better than twenty years old, and my total yearly electricity cost is under two grand. This math doesn't work.

I live in the US, where the federal government subsidized half the system cost (at least when I installed it) via tax credits. I save about a 100 bucks a month on electric, since I can charge my car at night at a discount, which requires a special meter enabled by the system.

It would be perfect for them.

Easy to use, easy to maintain and stabilisng their system.

They like to drive trucks like these as well.

Of course EVs might become a standard backup/stabilisation part in our ecosystem and currently everything ev is still more or less bleeding edge but why do you mind if people start investing in this type of technology over others?

Shouldn't you be happy about it?

At that moment, backup power (obtained at considerable expense) is precious. The utility may have to pay far beyond "well" to buy it.

Six grand seems like a lot but if the price came down then I could see using the top half of the tank to shift grid power use to cheaper rated hours or use home solar later in the day.

Well, that cycle part is important, as I'm still not clear on the warranty implications of actually using this vehicle's battery for stationary storage.

However, outside of that, I don't think its fair to call it ignorant. Grid emergencies are often related to excess consumption for really specific periods of time. Our local utility sends out alerts asking for reduced consumption during peak just to save them some $$$s, as spot prices can be very high for brief periods of time.

We also have TOU plans available where the peak rate is more than $.20 higher than the off peak rate. There are plenty of people that would gladly pocket that difference in exchange for burning through ~25% of a battery. And because its not an outage, but rather a cost issue during peak, they'll just load back up right after the "emergency" subsides.

I'd still really like to know what the warranty for this style of usage looks like.

To be fair, most folks who own pickups usually own multiple vehicles as individuals, and that's not even counting the other household members.

I don't know what they're getting at with "at scale", but it seems like a good idea for "rugged individuals" with a battery-powered big truck. What else are the going to do with a pristine, washed-every-week, empty pickup truck that never carries anything and is more of a status symbol than anything else?

It seems like the context was small and medium farms, where that might be more palatable since they probably have several vehicles.

Any links you can share?

It's Harbor Freight, so you get to roll the dice on whether or not it'll work when you need it to. It's also loud (like noise complaint from your neighbors loud).

The stand alone batteries are too expensive right now.

Sure they will — especially the families that have 2-4 of these trucks, which are plentiful in areas you do not live.

You underestimate the optimistic zeal of LARPers, who will be smug about just having the possibility.