To Do

Move/organize stones around shower area
Get extra 5 gallon water jugs
Build a PVC rack for the water jugs
Research pricing on sandbags

Power

So I think I’ve come to the final word on this whole generator/battery debate. Spoiler alert: the generator wins.

Realistically, I should know it wins because it’s the solution that everyone invariably uses, but me being me I have to know why that’s the right answer.

The crux of the issue turns out to be the amount of charge the batteries can hold vs. how much you want to discharge them and also the safe discharge rate of the batteries.

First, apparently you only ever want to discharge your batteries to ~50% of their capacity. Discharging them to 0% kills them. Thus, whatever battery capacity you think you need, double it.

Second, batteries have a safe discharge rate which is roughly C/10 where C is the capacity in amp-hours and the discharge rate is in Amps. Let’s run these numbers through my situation.

I have a refrigerator and an air conditioner - let’s assume that if they’re both on at the same time it’s 1KW of power. Figure 20% loss of power in conversion from DC to AC and that gives you a need for 1.2KW DC which is 100A at 12V. If I assume I’m using those 100AH batteries, so their safe discharge current is 100/10 = 10A. To get 100A I’d need 10 of them which would cost $1700. If we only want to discharge the batteries to 50%, this setup could run for 5 hours at max load.

So, this setup is toast for a hurricane situation

To Do

Move/organize stones around shower area
Get 2 more 5-gallon gas cans - need one extra to mix special fuel for the generator in
Get extra 5 gallon water jugs
Build a PVC rack for the water jugs
Research pricing on sandbags
Buy an retrieve the 5.5KW generator

Costs So Far

1KW Inverter - Harbor Freight: $60 (after 25% off coupon)

Generator - Harbor Freight: $89

Car Hitch - Amazon: $114

Cargo Carrier - Harbor Freight: $40

Tie-Down Protectors - Amazon: $13

8000BTU Window Air Conditioner - $100

Total: $416