Living without electricity is hard. Without electricity to power up your refrigerator, your food and fresh grocery items can easily go bad. It’s hard to find your way in the dark, too, and it isn’t exactly a great idea to keep a candle burning all through the night because it can be a potential fire hazard. But if you’re stuck in the middle of a power outage amidst a raging storm, there is a simple way to power up your home. How, you ask? By using your car and a pure sine wave inverter.
Since your car’s electricals run on direct current or DC and your house runs on alternating current or AC power, you will need the inverter to convert the DC power from your car to the AC power in your house. Here’s how you can do it.
Using Your Car to Power Up Your Home
1. Connect the inverter. You might be tempted to plug the inverter into your car’s cigarette lighter or 12v outlet. However, the outlet is not designed for extensive and prolonged usage and it could possibly cause a fire in the process. To avoid this unfortunate scenario, it would be wiser and safer to hard-wire the 12v pure sine wave inverter directly to your car’s battery.
2. Connect an extension cord to the inverter. Because it isn’t exactly a great idea to keep the inverter far from the car battery due to a potential loss of power, you may connect an extension cord to the inverter. Also, make sure to park your car as close to your house as possible and then run the shortest length of the extension cord to a power strip. Remember to keep your car in a well-ventilated area to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning. Also, exercise extreme caution when connecting the extension cord to prevent electrocution.
3. Plug in the appliances or power tools you want to use to the extension cord. After making sure that everything has been set up properly, you can now plug the appliances or power tools you want to use into the extension cord. Take note, however, that you won’t be able to power up your entire home with a 12v or 24v pure sine wave inverter like normal. It is because the electricity in your car’s battery is not unlimited. You also have to consider the capacity or “size” of the inverter you are using.
4. Keep your car’s engine running. If you need to keep a certain electrical appliance connected to the inverter for an extended period of time, you should keep your car’s engine running or idling. Otherwise, your car’s battery will get drained. Also, when idling your car, keep an eye out on the petrol gauge and be sure to leave enough fuel in the tank in case you need to use your car later on.
In case of emergency, you can use your car as a power generator. But to do this, you will need a good power inverter. Be sure to visit Elinz Electronics where you can find reliable DC to AC inverters at affordable prices.