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Recent winter storms have resulted in widespread consumer power outages. Sometimes folks have been left for days without electricity by ice storms that have brought down power lines and swamped utility crews. We just read about a fascinating individual response, a terrific way to get your power back on, and one more reason to support President-elect Obama's alternative energy push. (Hey Detroit, get with the program.)

Toyota Prius owners pay attention!!! This item from the New York Times via the Harvard Press blew us out of the water. John Sweeney, a Harvard resident who lost power in the storms, ran his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan, and several lights through his Toyota Prius, for three days while waiting on utility companies, on roughly five gallons of gas!!!

Mr. Sweeney wrote, in an e-mail message to The Harvard Press, “When it looked like we were going to be without power for awhile, I dug out an inverter (which takes 12v DC and creates 120v AC from it) and wired it into our Prius.” According to the Press, “the device allowed the engine to run every half hour, automatically charging the car battery and indirectly supplying the required power.”

Brilliant!

This scenario is not entirely new, many advocates of electric cars have argued that they can help build a smart grid. This means when not in use, the Prius and other similar plug-in cars can be wired to feed electricity back into the national electricity grid. The New York Times says the President-elect is already aware, having been quoted during the campaign discussing exactly thus, how consumers can use their plug-in cars to help regulate and smooth the national power grid and supply.

Labels: energy policy, Practical Advice, technology