Thanks for setting my mind at ease. . . i’ve put myself in worse situations

Have a fun trip and I hope your power is back when you return!

I have a built in inverter in my vehicle (Toyota FJ Crusier) and it has really come in handy for camping etc. They should have put an outlet up front as well as the one in the back though. Still, I just put a radio shack one up front and now I have two outlets.

I did start my car every 20 mins or so while it was charging the battery so I wouldn’t kill my car battery. This was a test of a last-ditch effort to keep my laptop battery charged. This method charged my battery from 4% to 94% is just over an hour and a half. I wouldn’t recommend this in other than dire circumstances but a hurricane qualifies in my book.

The inverter you have outputs “no load” <0.7 amps x120v,
or is it only 15v?
At any rate it outputs 120W continuous . ..

Figure out how many watts your device uses when charging
(this will be stated on the DC adapter for the macbook, etc.)
and figure out when to turn on the car and for how long,
don’t forget it takes a few minutes for the alternator to recharge the power spent by the starter motor.

Wouldn’t want to be stuck w/o power OR transportation.

I’d be interested in knowing how much juice running your macbook charger sucked from your car battery, compared to a single start of the engine.

If my limited knowledge of car batteries is correct, they are only used when the primary engine is not running, and are kept topped up on their charge by the alternator when the car is running.

jk – glad to see you’re not running the car just charge up. The premise of the post was great – just concerning given the cost of fuel due to the hurricane. Sorry for making a stupid ASSumption. Should have given a bit more credit to the idea and not just jumped to a conclusion. In any case glad you’re ok and hopefully they get you back on the grid sooner than later.

James,

I’m going to give you a break since you’ve just recently moved… But I’m disappointed that a gadget guy like yourself doesn’t have a generator for your house…

Of course I didn’t run my car to charge the battery. My car has an accessory outlet for just such a situation that is unswitched so it charged with the engine off. That’s why I would only hook one device at a time and not use a power strip. I don’t want to kill my car battery but this is a good last-ditch alternative to dead batteries. I thought it might help some who hadn’t thought of this.

I love how jkontherun actually reads comments (as indicated in the post about registering to comment). But I guess this is why those sites force people to register. So bad apples like the anti-MS guy don’t appear. I visited jkontherun multiple times today, just to see how James was holding out. The idea of running gadgets in a hurricane while without power for 3 days is quite interesting. I love to read about it. I don’t get to read about it very often (fortunately or unfortunately). I kind of wish jkontherun would update with new posts even more often, but I realize there just isn’t that much to talk about.

I’m just about done being told to stop wasting energy everywhere I turn by the power police.

JK – Seriously – take the day off. There is pretty much nothing happening out on the Internet that requires you to run your car for 2.5 hours just to charge up a battery for your MBP. That just makes no sense. I’m sure a lot of people enjoy reading your posts … but I’m sure they also understand that there are power issues in Houston and would rather you stop posting for a few days instead of wasting gas.

Uh, James,
That’s 120 watts at 120 VAC of AC power.

It only has one outlet so you can only charge one device at a time? James, you’re asking us to believe that in all of your available goodies you don’t have a power strip? Or a powered USB hub you could plug into the AC outlet and charge several USB devices at once?

I picked up a power inverter from Costco that sources 1000 watts continuos for the next hurricane-like storm that comes through Seattle. I’ve also got a Primus Eta stove tucked away along with two of the largest gas cylinders.

On a related note: I hope your meds are holding out. When a storm comes people need to remember to run out and get their meds topped up while they still can. When infrastructure goes down it can be a week or two before pharmacies come back up.