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0 pointsdragontamer11y ago0 comments

And tons of people have died as they fallen off of roofs as they installed solar panels.

> I don't need 10KW, either, I just need enough to power the furnace so I don't freeze to death.

Erm... what kind of furnace is in your house?

http://www.shop.thefurnaceoutlet.com/Electric-Furnaces_c15.h...

Ignoring the fact that furnaces are typically 10kw or more... then lets say you "only" need 3kw of power (so you can run off of a single Tesla battery). (Maybe you're running a smaller room-heater or something)

Then why not get a smaller $500 generator?

http://www.amazon.com/DuroStar-DS4000S-4-Cycle-Portable-Gene...

Or I dunno... a fireplace at that point. Since we're talking about small scale if you're using something smaller than a 10kw furnace...

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ceejayoz11y ago· 1 in thread

> Erm... what kind of furnace is in your house?

A natural gas furnace, which needs a small amount of power to start and continue running.

> Then why not get a smaller $500 generator?

As a non-mechanical person, I'd rather not have to maintain one. The lawnmower is enough for me. I also like the idea of being able to have some additional powered items plugged in in an extended outage.

dragontamerOP11y ago

> A natural gas furnace, which needs a small amount of power to start and continue running.

Hmm, at which point I wonder if your standard UPS actually does the job. When I think "PowerWall", I'm thinking of things that power the entire house.

But UPSes are useful for the small-scale "important" appliances. Like the sump pump or I guess in this case... a gas furnace.

APC UPSes are only about $500. My parents had flooding issues with their Sump Pump as power went out a few years ago, and they just installed some UPS on it. Haven't had a problem since then.

http://www.tripplite.com/shared/literature/white-paper/how-t...

I'll have to go to their basement to figure out which brand they bought. But the above whitepaper gives you an idea of how it works with a sump pump.

Sounds a hell-of-a-lot cheaper than the Tesla Powerwall still.

EDIT: Seems like some guy in the UK has done the calcs already. http://kissurvival.com/running-your-gas-furnace-from-a-gener...

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