Does anyone have answers to the following:

Using an inverter on a car that gets around 25 miles per gallon, how much gasoline would be used per hour to generate 1000 watts? (There must be some kind of formula)

If a UPS can power a PC and Monitor (say 400 watts) for 20 minutes, how long (range) could it power a laptop?

Preparation reminder:

Don't forget to stock up an foods that are imported: coffee, teas, spices, chocolate, etc. Even if Y2k is not TEOCAWKI, these items will be very expensive.

Thanks,

-- Michael (mhgentry@prodigy.net), December 08, 1999

Answers

TEOCAWKI = The end of chocolate as we know it

No more Hershey's kisses

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), December 08, 1999.

Your first question is impossible to answer. Generally, smaller engines will run more efficiently than larger ones. The gas mileage depends on vehicle weight, aerodynamics, final drive ratio, condition, type of driving, tires, temperature and a million other things. Best to run a test and see for yourself.

Your second question is more reasonable. The UPS you mention will have an amp-hour or watt-hour rating. Your description gives 400X.33=132 watt-hours. Divide the 132 number by the number of watts your laptop uses and you'll have a *ROUGH* idea on the number of hours it *SHOULD* run. YMMV.

-- Gary S. (garys_2k@yahoo.com), December 08, 1999.

I was trying to be brief, and omitted some important information.

The car is stationary, parked in the garage, hopefully generating enough electricity to run my cappucino machine and to watch old movies (also to keep my UPS charged.) If the engine were running at 1500 RPM (no wind resistance, tire friction, etc.), would it be possible to calculate the fuel consumption?

The "C" in TEOCAWKI is civilization (though it could also be chocolate) - the world will survive.

Thanks, Gary, for the UPS answer.

-- Michael (mhgentry@prodigy.net), December 08, 1999.

Using an inverter on a car that gets around 25 miles per gallon, how much gasoline would be used per hour to generate 1000 watts? (There must be some kind of formula)

GALLONS OF GAS=revolutions per minute/cc of engine x frequency radio station being played.

Dicky

-- richard cabeza (DICKNIXONBIFORE@HEDICKS.YOU), December 08, 1999.

As an estimate (and there are too many variables to run a firm answer):

Lets say that you get your 25 mpg at a steady 60 mph road driving. This will typically (just one of the variables) be 3000 rpm.

At a steady 30 mph (1500 rpm) you might expect to increase this to 30 mpg. This is the condition you're looking for. It's loaded with other variables, but is a reasonable estimate. OK, this says that you'd burn 1 gallon of fuel every hour if the car were being driven on the road......30 mpg/30 mph = 1 gallon per hour.

Got a full 20 gallon tank? You can figure on using the car for about 20 hours. Now, you can tweak this every which way and vary the results a little, but it's about what you would be faced with. Maybe you'll get 25 hours out of that tank, maybe not.

The point is, running a little inverter from a car is a very inefficient way of doing business.

By the way, a simple way of finding out for yourself is to measure your gas consumption by letting the car idle, or run at 1500 rpm, for a couple of hours, or even more, starting with a full tank, and then refilling afterwards

-- l (l@l.l), December 09, 1999.

there might also be a chance of over heating with it running and not moveing unless you have a heavy duty fan or some way to keep the engine cool

-- wittey (wittey@aol.com), December 09, 1999.

Michael; Please make sure you have a dry vent tube running out side because of CO gases from the cars engine, Seems like everyone assumed you would do that, but !!! Get the aluminum kind it won't melt on the exhaust pipe. Just my thoughts.

-- Furie (furieart@dnet.net), December 09, 1999.