Here's a question for everyone. What is the estimated time that the car will sit idling on the battery? Like sitting in a driveway parked but on. I'm curious because I am planning on using an AC inverter coupled with a 12 gage extension cord the next time I lose power in my house from storms/crazy drivers/etc.

Here's a question for everyone. What is the estimated time that the car will sit idling on the battery? Like sitting in a driveway parked but on. I'm curious because I am planning on using an AC inverter coupled with a 12 gage extension cord the next time I lose power in my house from storms/crazy drivers/etc.

You mean before the engine comes on? AFAIK, the car will never "give up" and turn itself off (possibly after it runs out of gas and drains the battery to the absolute floor?) A fully charged battery is 10 usable KWh. The Volt idles at somewhere in the vicinity of 400W with the HVAC turned off.

I don't know how large an inverter you had planned? The largest you can safely put on the 12V bus is somewhere in the 1000-1500W range (APM can provide 175 Amps maximum, the car uses 20-30 of them itself at "idle".)

So if it was a 1500W inverter, that'd be a 1900W load if the inverter is drawing full power - meaning if it started fully charged the battery would hit the CS mode battery floor after just over 5 hours. Then the engine will cycle on about a 15% duty cycle, I think - on for ~2 minutes, off for 12, repeat (getting a little speculative - the duty cycle should be about right, but I'm guessing at the range it'll cycle through...)

What about a nice, inexpensive 2000W-3000W generator with sine wave output? The reason I ask is you can then use the car to run to the store or do something away while the generator keeps the power going throughout the period.

What about a nice, inexpensive 2000W-3000W generator with sine wave output? The reason I ask is you can then use the car to run to the store or do something away while the generator keeps the power going throughout the period.

Spend thousands more to create 30 times the pollutants?

Not really - you can get that size generator for $400 or so and only use it during rare (very rare in the USA) power failures. There are better natural gas and propane-burning generators from Genrac which are very low emissions.

The AC inverter is a good idea but then what if you do have to drive somewhere and the refrigerators then lose power for (x hours)? I'm just thinking maybe go ahead and do both. Use the AC inverter for a while but have a last-minute generator in case you have to be somewhere. Like work or to go out for some task. If folks can afford a Volt, they can also add a $400 generator to the standby arsenal.

On the low-end price wise: http://www.harborfreight.com/predator-generators-031512.html?limit=all

My current inverter is only a 150W one I got at an electronics store a couple years back. Ideally, I would just like to power a couple lights in my house (CFLs) and maybe a computer or TV.

That sounds like a serious overload for that inverter. No chance of any desktop system fitting that power busget, and the most efficient TVs I know are ~100W (and you'd need to power the cable box, too.) You might manage a laptop, depending on the laptop (but remember, you won't have power to your router...)

On the plus side, the Volt will last a long time powering such a small inverter - with a ~650W total load, it should run close to 16 hours from a charged battery before the engine kicks on, and the engine duty cycle will be under 5%. Of course, at this point, the car is drawing 3 times as much power as you're getting out of it.

You can get some pretty nice sine-wave inverters that connect to the 120V battery directly which output 400-600W. The load on the Volt would be minimal and it could keep the 12V charged if the car is "running" (in the on-position). The 150W inverter is only going to power maybe one laptop plus a couple CFL lamps but not a TV unless it is LCD 19" or LED 24" plus the 45W for a cable box or dish box. While you do this research - get a Kill-a-Watt device to verify load per item so you know for sure what each individual appliance load is.

And, if you get a 600W sine inverter, you should easily be able to cover a medium-sized refrigerator to make sure you don't lose contents.

My cable modem and router are on a UPS (Cyberpower 1350avr) along with the computer and the TV. I gotta say this is a pretty sweet UPS. It will power the TV (55" Samsung), the computer (2011 iMac 27"), cable modem (Apple Time Capsule) & router (Motorola Surfboard SBG6580) for 15 min before it runs out. It will power just the cable modem and router by themselves for over an hour. I also ran a test to see if it would power my Xbox 360, TV, cable modem & router and the time is a bit better (25 min) than with the iMac.

I will definitely need to get a higher wattage inverter if I want to run all of those off my car if the situation arises. I can always keep my 150w for lighting and use the higher for the rest of the devices.

DCFusor has done this, you may want to search for that thread.

I am asking this because I am not sure that a depletion of the 12V battery, which would occur very rapidly with a 1500Watt load will be met by a recharging through the high voltage system. I don't know how the low and high voltage system interact. At 1500Watt you will be drawing over 125A from the starter battery.