Prius to home in a storm

Can you tell us a little more about the price for such a high-end system and if you worry the power won't go out enough to justify how much money you spent on it?

 

Noice!

For anybody who hasn't seen Randy around, he's the proprietor of PlugOut Power, where you can find the system shown in the photo (in two flavors, a 3 kW and a 5 kW size).

The idea of running an inverter from the high-voltage system of the Prius in order to escape the power limits on the 12 volt system has been around more than a dozen years, and people have cobbled various things together to do it. Richard Factor put together a basic wish list for the kind of system that would fit the bill nicely.

Some of the past approaches have been covered in other threads or sites:

PriUPS-getting electricity FROM your hybrid vehicle

Using a Prius as a generator — northernarizona-windandsun

My install and review of the AIMS Prius 2kW Pure Sine Wave Inverter for Backup Power Generator | PriusChat

My install and review of the ConVerdant LFI30-220 3kVA Pure Sine Wave Inverter for Backup Power | PriusChat

By the way, that last one was sold by an older venture of Randy's, ConVerdant Power. I ended up getting one of those not long ago, passed along by another PriusChatter. (By whatever fluke of circumstance, I ended up with the one with serial number N001!)

Compared to the older one I ended up with, Randy's newer ones have come down in both size and weight. The old 3kVA unit was heavy (33 kg) and really, awkwardly, big (about 30 by 55 by 50 cm, nearly 83 liters of space):



... it was one giant box including a big transformer in the bottom. You can see the system Randy is offering now has the inverter and the transformer in separate boxes, which could give you more flexibility to squeeze them in somewhere, and the inverter box is slimmed down to 10 by 30 by 44 cm, just 13 liters, and only around 12 kg.

The transformer is still the heavy bit, and bulky (maybe 20 liters-ish). So the whole system still comes in around 29 kg for the 3kW version, but that's better than 33 kg for the old one, and totals around 33 liters, way better than 83 for the old one.

I'm experimenting with how small a package I could squash the old one into ... it's looking like I could get it to maybe 39 liters without modifying much, just reducing the empty space in the case. Will have to be careful to maintain cooling capacity ...



Some other ways it looks like Randy has improved this one over the old ConVerdant one:

• This one produces 240 VAC natively from the inverter itself; if that's all you need, it looks like you could leave the transformer behind, which is only needed to produce the 240/120 VAC split-phase output.
• This one can be attached to a 24 V (or 48 V, for the 5 kW version) dedicated battery bank, and keep that charged for use when the Prius is on errands.
• These seem to be rated 3 or 5 actual kilowatts (slightly higher on VA); the old ConVerdant units were 3 or 5 kVA, and not quite as many watts.
• Input voltage rating up to 450 VDC. Should allow use as far back as the Gen 1 Prius, which was always hard to do this with because of its higher 274 volt battery, and also various newer vehicles with higher battery voltages.

Naturally, I don't have one of these new ones, but I'll be watching for a review thread from somebody who gets one!

My own wish list would include actual HV cable and connectors used for the connection to the car's HV wiring.

Other threads about these kinds of systems often fill up with comments about whether it is a good or a silly idea, many of them from people who don't realize they're repeating whole past discussions. To help with that, Richard Factor put together a summary of a lot of the Usual Comments.

Edit: oop, messages crossed with Randy's. I'm not connected with Randy or his company, I just kind of like the idea, so I don't mind giving details, keeps Randy from having to be salesy.

 

This looks like it has an input rating to 450V, and the Prius Prime is on the approved vehicle list. Does that mean the RAV4 Prime will also get approved?

I believe the AIMS can't go up to the Prime battery voltages.

 

Oh yeah, I had meant to include that in the bullet list and forgot. Well, the edit window is still open so ... there it is.

 

Nominally 355.2 V, vs 351.5 V in the Prius Prime.

I.e. RAV4 battery is 96 cells tall, vs 95 cells in Prius Prime battery.

 

Nice website.

 

Bump.

Nice product.
A bit out of my price range, but.....a great many things are.

 

The older ones do sometimes pop up for resale ... as I can attest. As mentioned above, they tend to have narrower input voltage ranges than Randy's new ones, but will generally accommodate regular Prii except for Gen 1. And the old LFIxx's are really bulky, as mentioned. The little blue AIMS made a quite tidy package.

The approach taken by techntrek was to identify several common commercial UPS models that turn up on eBay from time to time and used compatible battery voltage.

 

Now that is the coolest Prius mod I ve seen in a long time! I want one!!


iPhone ?

 

More interesting reading Prius generator.

Prius+ 3kW UPS in trunk approx $200??

Prius Generator

The Correct Answer

 

I currently have 1000 w pure sine inverter hooked up to the 12 amp battery. The wire is 6g copper stranded from home depot, the problem is that they are stiff. I was thinking of changing it out with a more flexible jumper cable wire. Jumper cable wire is copper clad aluminum, is that safe?

 

Yes... Once you get the initial system up and running the next step is further refining the set up so over time it's not only safer, but easier to use and more versatile. Bonus points for making it look nice too! Do all these and life will go well for you!

 

Maybe?

6 gauge wire is a bit light for that application as it is... good for maybe 60 amps? Meaning that wire would start overheating before you hit the 1000 watt limit on your inverter.

Good jumper cable wire is fine-strand pure copper, and it can be very flexible with the right insulation type.

If you are going to redo yours, I would suggest 4ga wire to gain a comfortable safety margin when using the inverter at full power.

Welding cable is great stuff- needs to be flexible so that the welder can move the tool around.