Leaf as a portable 110v generator?

[gascant]

I agree a pure sine wave inverter is best. I have seen some 600 watt sine wave inverters, which could be a good size for this mission if I can coax the fridge into avoiding de-frost cycles. I could leave the Leaf powered-on in my locked garage so it could keep the 12V battery charged from the main pack. If I avoid other loads, I could keep the refrigerator going at least 2 weeks. Unless we have the "big one" earthquake, I would not expect an outage to last anywhere near that long. I would be happy to keep the average power under 300W. Does anyone know at what rate the Leaf can re-charge the 12V battery ?

Yeah, the 600 W inverter is a relatively modest investment that, with cables and in-line fuse, could come in at around $200-250. I'm in your camp on total power consumption in the event of a blackout--minimal. Warranty issue aside, maybe we can get Ingineer to weigh in on how to do this safely. After all, a bunch of us have already made mods to the LEAF that would potentially violate the warranty. Oddly, the Nissan folks didn't comment on whether the upgraded horn violated the warranty--perhaps because it only draws 8 Amps on a 10 Amp fused circuit.

 

[TomT]

Since the Leaf itself draws something like 250-300 watts parasitic when powered up, your continuous available time would be far less than two weeks... I also think that anything over 600 watts or so (50 amps draw on the 12 volt battery) would be inviting problems...

I could leave the Leaf powered-on in my locked garage so it could keep the 12V battery charged from the main pack. If I avoid other loads, I could keep the refrigerator going at least 2 weeks.