Prius Powers House During Outage

A Canadian man said he used his Toyota Prius as a generator to power his furnace, lights, refrigerator and TV during the recent ice storm. Bob Osemlak lost power for nearly a full day on Dec. 21. Osemlak prepared for the outage by installing an outlet on his furnace. He then ran a cord through the basement to his hybrid electric car. When the power went out, he conserved his car's battery by rotating between using it for heat and electricity. He used the car to power his house for nine hours, and the car's battery went down by less than one bar--equivalent to a gallon of gas.