After a meeting of Citizens' Climate Lobby's Princeton chapter, Gaylord showed me the inverter he bought that allows him to use his Prius as a generator during power outages. It may not be officially condoned by the Toyota dealership, but he says it has kept his house going through a number of storms in recent years. As the frig, furnace, etc. draw down the battery power in the Prius, the engine automatically starts up to replenish the batteries. The inverter, with a capacity of around 1500-2000 watts, switches the car's DC current to the house's AC current. The frig uses one or two hundred watts, depending on the vintage. A furnace may use 750 watts for the initial ignition, then about 400 watts to run the fan. Definitely don't want to try running the electric dryer (3500 watts).
The inverter can be bought online, but Gaylord bought his at Harbor Freight in Trenton. A cord to connect the inverter to the Prius battery can be bought at a local auto parts store. These two items add up to less than $200--far cheaper than buying a stand-alone generator that will be rarely used and may prove less than dependable. You'll likely need a switch installed on the furnace so you can plug it into an extension cord running from the inverter. (At our house, we've always used a wood stove for backup heat (and often primary heat as well), but this sort of inverter would be handy for the refrigerator and other appliances.)
Another approach to energy backup for the home, for those who have a lot more spare change, is the Joule Box. It's an invention of Mike Strizke, best known for The Hopewell Project, a hydrogen powered home not far from Princeton.
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