Peak Oil - Emergency Electricity for Home - Genverter?

[valuesystem]

In the case peak oil causes disruptions in the electricity supply, it is a good idea to have a backup plan. In my case, my home needs electricity for both heat and water. In the winter, without electricity, my house is in a bad way

Comments

[dtbrookes]

Just one comment. I haven't used a drier (in Illinois) for 1.5 years now. Clothes dry excellently indoors in winter because humidity is low. I hang the clothes on a fold out "clothes horse" (sorry, I don't know what this object is called in American English) - it functions quite well as a humidifier as well. I'd demote the drier to the "completely useless" category.

[valuesystem]

That is good to know. I sort of remembered something about clothes drying in the winter... you are right, the low humidity in the house would make the drying fairly speedy.

That would also same on my LPG propane load, since my dryer burns the NPG for heat, and just uses the electricity to spin the drums and run the electronic controls.

Some more comments

[dtbrookes]

Apologies for the random post, I tend to "dip and skim" through your posts. I'll keep commenting as I spot things to comment on. You've probably gathered my general bias in all of this by now: Namely, become more efficient, and get by with less. In that spirit, an electric stove is (IMO) a really bad device. Basically you're taking "heat", turning it into electricity, and then turning it back into "heat". If you total up losses in generation, battery storage and factor in of course that you can only get 50% of your energy back from an electric circuit (recall impedance matching, from physics/electrical engineering 101), you're looking at overall efficiencies of less than 5%.

As a general design principle, I feel that we need to focus on using heat sources to do heating and save electricity for lighting and making things spin around (lol). So, use a gas or wood stove for cooking IMO.

Re: Some more comments

[valuesystem]

I understand about the electric stove. We have looked at a propane stove with electric start and gadgets, and in all likelyhood, we will end up buying one. In the meantime, if the power is out, it may be more efficient to use a burner on the electric stove to heat water than using the microwave. I have to run the numbers on this

Re: Some more comments

[dtbrookes]

I await the microwave versus stove competition with anticipation. If you asked me to take a wild guess, I'd vote for the mircowave to win (use less electricity), but I'm not certain about that result at all.

Re: Some more comments

[valuesystem]

I pulled out the stove, and to my chagrin, realized that the outlet is 220 V, with the odd shaped sideways prongs. So, I guess I won’t be able to conduct my experiment that way. I suppose I could turn off all the circuits in the house, and watch the meter spin… I guess I’ll think about that.

Here are my results from the microwave oven:

1997 Goldstar rated at 12 amps

I did my experiment with two cups of cold tap water in a soup bowl.

Kill A Watt says…

Watts = ~1400
Amps = ~12.5
Time to Boil = ~ 4.0 minutes
Time to Vigorous Boil = ~ 4.5 minutes
Energy consumed: 0.10 KWH

I calculate the energy use at 105 WH or 0.105 KWH.

At 10 cents per KWH, boiling two cups of water costs about one penny.

Two more things would be of interest… amount of coal burned, assuming all electricity came from coal, and amount of CO2 released.

Maybe I’ll scour the internet to find the consumption of the electric stove. I have no doubt that it is a “guzzler”.

[anonymous]

We live in the country and have lost power twice for about a week during ice or wind storms in the last ten years. The first time we just made due without power, the second time was after purchasing a generator for y2k. (purchased more for the ice storms rather than y2k, but still

[valuesystem]

Interesting thoughts