Hurricane Sandy - I love my Prius!

Sure hundreds avail but that's a massive load on the Prius. Close to 200 amps. Prius could not support that big a unit.

 

Of course it would be great to tap into the 200v on the traction but I thought the discussion was the 12 volt.

 

My installation is similar to FirstFlight. However, i bolted my unit to the floor and cut a hole for it in the plastic liner. I connected it to the battery with #6 wire. I have a 27 cuft side by side fridge, as I said before, the inrush current is too high for my 1200watt inverter, but the fridge will start when the inverter automatically restarts. I left my car in my garage and put a pipe on the exhaust to vent it out under the garage door which was open only 1'. I didn't want any trees falling on my car. I plan on ordering the 2000 watt unit, but not loading it more than 1000 watts accept for surges.
A flooded battery is a regular car battery, not the AGM type unit in the Prius. The flooded batteries are designed to delivery large slugs of current which is normally neeeded to run the starter motor, which of course the Prius does not have.
On another note, you cannot parallel inveters to get more power. The AC outputs will not be in phase. You can use two of them, powering seperate loads, but that will not help the inrush current issue.

 

I don't think we can find an inexpensive inverter to connect directly to the traction battery. That would be more efficient too. The efficiency of the series connected inverters, 240 to 12 and 12 to 120VAC is probably about 75%.
Oh, I used about 2.5 gallons a day, with the car running for 3 days straight.

 

FirstFlight your quoting me on that post. I did not post that. vertex did.

 

Yes, but not these inexpensive ones. Have you used any load sharing ones?

 

what is the benefit of the more advanced set up you are doing to the traction batt?

 

A direct connection to the traction battery allows the use of a more powerful inverter and a more efficient setup since less power is lost due to heating of the connections between the battery and the inverter. For a given power output, a higher voltage allows a lower current flow. Resistance losses increase according to the square of the current flow.

 

So you have the keyless system where you start the car and jeep the key in your pocket?

That would make it a little more safe.

You can also lock the doors using the key in the fob to open then again.
That way with a prius with out keyless you can keep the car running and fob in the slot but still have the doors closed.


-Tapatalk

 

you guys need to make sandy power outages prius backup videos on youtube!!

 

There are mil/med/ind inverters that can be had for the voltage of the traction/ev battery. Price? Discussed briefly in a thread maybe a month ago.

My choice given time would be something like these.
GFX1312 http://www.outbackpower.com/pdf/specs/GFX_Intl_Series_SpecSheetA4_02.2012_lr.pdf
FX2012MT http://www.outbackpower.com/pdf/specs/98000240100_RevD_M-Series_SpecSheet.pdf
add a fw-x240 auto transformer for 240loads with proper phase between mains legs 1 and 2. http://www.outbackpower.com/pdf/manuals/PSX-240_Installation_Manual.pdf

Useful for backfeeding your panel to get your solar pv microinverters running as they need a grid 60hz signal to turn on and run. After disconnecting from grid to protect utility workers if your system doesn't do this automaticly.

One large deep cycle sealed battery always charged and on standby might be a good investment.

Still have 1000's without power here in WV also.

 

I would imagine if your using the HV batt its because your sinking a big inverter load which would suck down the battery level fairly quickly requiring the engine/mg to start so maybe your 41% software is moot. The engines going to start quick when it sees a big load. Which is not a problem with the engine running all the time. It would not use alot of gas. The 2 problems with a big load on HV is battery heat and battery ecu becoming confused on out of range current consumption. It may throw a cel but thats no big deal but battery heat sure is. Stock fan may not work well enough.

But its the way to go.
Someone should manufacture a pigtail that goes in between the battery BOI (big orange interlock) and provides a drop for inverter use while mainlining oem wiring.

 

Oops your right that just disables the relays. I was trying to think of an easy way to grab battery B+ without taking the whole battery out.