I haven't been outside yet, but I pretty much know what to expect. The winds didn't get really violent until right before the end, and then it was over. I did hear a couple of thumps from branches hitting the roof.
Note to self: Don't try to run a home theater projector and 200 watt stereo on an inverter. Boy did that burn through the batteries in a hurry on the 2000 watt inverter.
About 11 pm I decided to break out the genny. Mainly because I wasn't sure how long the inverter would run 2 refrigerators and 2 freezers and I didn't want to run them all night on the inverter and risk shortening the life span of the batteries and/or having the freezers thaw out.
It's actually been years since I cranked up the genny, and I've never used it at home before. I was half expecting it to not work. It took a while to get it cranked (pull starter) but once it got going it was humming along. I hooked up the four batteries to charge and the two refrigerators and two freezers and went to bed.
It wasn't starting from a full tank (just a small BBQ tank) but it must have run most of the night because this morning the freezers were still frozen solid with no signs of thawing and the batteries were fully charged and right at 13.5 volts which is the float voltage. It's supposed to go 8 hours on a tank, so that's about right. I have 5 more tanks.
Here is my philosophy on the inverters and genny. Since the genny is most efficient at full load, and the inverters are most efficient at light loads, when running intermittent things like refrigerators and freezers, it it grossly inefficient to run just those on a generator. So the idea is to run on inverters until the batteries get low, then run on the genny while recharging he batteries with the genny. And while on generator power, I can run my home theater, etc. Then once the batteries are charged up, switch back over to using the inverter. The batteries were fully charged this morning. That was one thing I was afraid might be a ***** in the armor - what if the batteries take too long to charge?
I figure I may be able to get by running the genny 16 hours and the inverters 8 hours in a 24 hour period at worst. I could possibly make it longer on inverter power and thus have to use the genny less often. So at worst, that's two small propane tanks per day, and I have six, so that gets me continuous power for three full days, probably more. Obviously running a couple of window A/Cs will change the math... And if I'm expecting a longer period without power, I'll need to ration electricity, and maybe use the cars to help recharge batteries.
In the bedroom I was running a fan off of a small inverter and an old fashioned marine battery. It was still going when I woke up, battery at over 12 volts still.
So all in all, the system worked well, I just didn't count on how fast the home theater system would drain the batteries on the 2k inverter. And it won't run on the big inverter (6k) because it's a modified sine wave while the 2k inverter is a pure sine wave. Of course I could just hook up the 2k inverter to the batteries on the 6k inverter. But really I'll need the genny for running the home theater for any length of time. Not much else in the house cares whether it's modified sine wave or pure sine wave, but electronics can be picky about power.
