Small Battery Back up

I clip a 200 watt inverter to a lawn mower battery to run a fan for my wife (she has to have the white noise) at night during outages. Saves having the big generator cranking all night.

if you dont want to deal with the mess, fine, but cheap HF generators are about $89.

The proposed pack is an option, but be careful, batteries die over time. and you have to keep it charged, leaving it sit in the garage will mean that its no good when you need it.

the battery is 28 ah, assuming 100% efficiency, you arent going to get a full hour at full continuous load.

It would be nice to have... lights for two days... probably not.

ITs also MSW, not sine wave. If you want light, test it out with CFLs, a lot won't light with MSW. It might run a single 12W CFL for 24 hours (two nights). At that point, I would just get a nice fluorescent or LED lantern for a lot less cash....

What we use most for light during short power outages is our Aladdin mantle lamp. Burns kerosene, light output about equivalent to a 60 watt incandescent, smoke and odor free. We also have a 5000W - 240V generator and 10 circuit transfer switch for intermittent use during long power outages: covers the refrigerator, freezer, microwave, well pump, and general lighting. And a 2000W pure sine wave generator for the computer/entertainment center -- need good movies and music to rock the dark away.

my power outtages are either really short or really long. Flashlights are good for the first hour, then its generator time for the next many hours to days. If it is raining, as soon as the power goes out I light up the generator in case the sump pumps need it. (once power went out and the sump was dry, 30 min later I had water gushing out of the pit and an inch on the floor before I had the generator started, from now on, if itis raining and power goes out, the generator will come on)

That duracell thing is ok if you have a short outage, but its not going to be very satisfactory to own.

For one thing, it'll never run even a single 26w CFL for a couple days time. Another issue is, the spec sheet says a 35 hour charge time, so even if you have solar cells pushing it during the day you're going to always have diminidhing returns.

Spend the money and get a small generator if outages like that duration are a serious enough concern. Better option in the long run in my opinion.

For lights get yourself a few lanterns that run on D batteries. They will light a room fairly well and a set (8) of batteries last a long time. The invertor and a deep cycle battery is way cheaper that the duracell pack. Other than that I've got a cheapo 1000w 2-stroke generator that so far (2 years) has worked great for the $75 I paid for it. It is loud though and can't be run in an enclosed space as it does throw a good deal of fumes.

I have a Rayovac LED lantern that uses 3 "D" cells. It will run for 150 hours on low, 72 on high on just the 3 batteries. Puts out a lot of light, too. I run my generator sparingly during outages, both for noise and fuel reasons.

It's here: LED Lantern

heat seeker said:

I have a Rayovac LED lantern that uses 3 "D" cells. It will run for 150 hours on low, 72 on high on just the 3 batteries. Puts out a lot of light, too. I run my generator sparingly during outages, both for noise and fuel reasons.

It's here: LED Lantern

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Going to have to try one of those out. Mine are flouresent tubes. They are handy on the boat to since I don't like to run a propane lantern in that close of a proximity to a gas tank.

It's certainly neater/cleaner than individual components.
I've got an Xantrex puresine 600 watt inverter ('bout $139) thats clean enough to run any electronics and big enough to run most small things short of high resistance items. Coupled with a 125 amphr deep discharge battery ($110 Walmart) It can run a few lights and my wife's sleep machine for three nights easily.
I actually use the set up when we go camping (not backpacking!!) as she needs the machine to be able to sleep well.

According to Don Rowe
http://www.donrowe.com/inverters/inverter_faq.html#how_long
this set up could power 3 13 watt cfl's for 16 hrs.

Then again a cheap propane lantern will only cost $30