Thanks for the informative post, gpsman1. To put it in perspective, my old inefficient refrigerator draws 200 watts when it is running (which is not constant). New ones draw half that. So for keeping your food cold in a summer blackout, or running ten 15 watt compact florescent light bulbs, or a laptop computer, an inverter could make your house a whole lot more livable during a blackout.

As I stated earlier, I have a big gas generator, but it would really be nice to have a way to generate quiet, clean power when only a small amount is needed, like through the night.

My next task is to determine if the inverter will run my gas furnace. A power outage in winter (in Michigan) would really require that the furnace could run all night. I noticed on an internet blog for a Prius with an inverter, that the modified square waveform inverter was inadequate to run a modern high efficiency furnace with electronic controls. My furnace is older, but this may be a consideration for someone else considering an inverter backup. They would need to pop for a true sine wave inverter, which is more expensive.