Friday, September 26, 2008

How a Power Inverter Can Save You Money Over a Gasoline Generator

It is based on using an inverter in home emergency purposes rather than a completely built unit that would power an entire house. These units often require large battery banks with an external source of power such as sun or wind generators to keep the batteries charged. Nor will it cover large gasoline, diesel, or propane generators that are connected to the fuse box of a house and power an entire house.

What it will be covering are small home generators that usually have a 3-5 gallon gas tank and a 2- 6 HP engine. These are run outside the house and power certain appliances inside the house via an electrical cord attached to the generator. The electrical power inverter we will be discussing will be powered by a single car battery which will require recharging every one to two hours by running the engine of the car.

Studies have shown that a V-6 automobile engine uses approximately 0.5 gallons of gas for every 90 minutes it is run. What this translates out to is that if you were to run a 750 watt inverter, you would have to recharge a 120amp battery every 2 hours by idling the car for 10 minutes. This means that you could get 36 hours of use from a 750 watt inverter on one gallon of gasoline. This equals a $3.00 fuel price every 24 hours if gasoline is priced at $4 a gallon.

A 4400 watt gasoline generator uses about 3.2 gallons of gasoline for every 8 hours of service. This comes out to 9.6 gallons of gas for a 24 hour period or around $38 for 24 hours of use.

If you are using a smaller generator such as a 1000 watt model, which in most cases is more practical, you would be using 1.2 gallons every 5-8 hours depending on the load. This comes out to $5 every 8 hours ,or $15 for every 24 hour period.

Now for the power inverter numbers. If you were using a 750 watt power inverter, which would be enough to power a laptop, small tv, dvd player, satellite dish box, and a lamp it would use 0.2 gallons for every 8 hours or 0.6 gallons for every 24 hours. for a cost of $2.40.

In summary the cost of running a 4400 watt generator for 24 hours is $38 and a 1000 watt generator for 24 hours is $15 and the cost of the inverter for 24 hours is $2.40

I feel many people do not use power inverters in emergencies just because they aren't familiar with them. They're easier to hook up then a generator. You just have to clip it on to your battery, plus the savings is substantial if you have a power outage for an extended period of time. For more information on this subject and the products come visit http://www.inverterssavegas.com.

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