Power Your Home With a Prius

Im skeptical because no photo's or videos are available, nor is there a description of components involved. If you have a truly innovative Plug out product that works, Why wouldn't you showcase it to make some money? Smart enought to create a website and pricing chart but unable or unwilling to DEMO upfront. Something stinks.

 

There is no demo or photo of the device because it is really easy to do and if you have any tinkering ability, you wouldn't pay this person for their good idea.
1. Buy an DC=>AC inverter rated for about 800-1200 watts. (More than this is unnecessary a little more dangerous in terms of current, wiring, etc.)
2. Connect to car (not through cigarette lighter- wiring safety concerns).
3. Run extension cord to house.
4. Turn off anything you don't really need. Replace any incandescant light bulbs with LEDs or CFLs.
5. Disconnect house from grid by flipping main breaker...

I will let you figure out the rest, but...that's why there is no picture or demo on the site, I surmise.

 

Note that this is far from the first claim for doing this. I've recently bought an inverter myself for the next power outage, after being left with no power for 3 days in October. I opted for a 1500W Pure Sine Wave inverter (the cheaper modified sine wave, which Converdant appears to be offering in their low-end configuration, doesn't work well with some loads). I intend to limit my power usage while attached to the Prius to 1000W, but might connect it to another car to for one motor I want to run that may need more peak startup power (I have not yet tested this motor with this inverter). I've only done limited testing with it so far, and the only slight concern I have is the unit appears to have rather large capacitors inside, and arcs considerably when connected to the battery. I'm planning to add a way to charge up its capacitors more gradually before powering it on (probably by connecting through a light bulb before making a direct connection), because the Prius battery is not a starter battery, and isn't meant to supply brief, high surge loads.

Some other approaches:
PriUPS-getting electricity FROM your hybrid vehicle
Prius -UPS Project
http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...s-12-volt-generator-during-power-failure.html
http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...ssion/99532-how-convert-dc-ac-2006-prius.html

 

i've powered several places i've lived, with my car. i've fired up the inverter for special purposes while camping. i even powered my uncles breathing respirator off of my car (quadriplegic). i would max everything at 900 watts. a genIII can probably give you 1000w but i wouldn't recommend it.

iI've found on average a prius will burn a gallon every 10 to 12 hours while sitting idle.
Under full load it's a gallon every hour and a half to 3 hours. (roughly). i've ran a few sustained loads around 400-500w and that gave me that 5 to 6 hour window i wanted. (we were running drills too)

I find it to be rather perfect for rural jobs (no longer a problem since i live in los angeles) I can run lighter duty tools along with cfls. I have ran half a painters light... (too much wattage for both lights)

make sure to never do this in your garage with the door closed (a man recently died accidentally leaving his prius on).

 

i know it's a kit... so you get a few connectors... but i have a better inverter in my car (only because it's slightly higher rating and fan cooled). i just don't see the point for 300 dollars when it's user installed. The higher grade models require you to have a lexus ct200h.

 

They're probably using Plugin Supply conversion kits.

 

No, you read it wrong. Features include mobile emergency power, high efficient operation, quiet, clean and reliable and affordable. Hybrids supported are Prius Gen II+III, CT200h and ask about other hybrids.
It's not mobile emergency power only works with Prius and high efficient operation only works with CT200h. If that's the case, then quiet clean and reliable only works with other hybrids. Affordable only works with 1ke for any hybrid.

 

where did these guys come from? prices seem pretty good for turnkey.

 

Yes, I'd be interested to find out too. Converdant's website doesn't say much, but the 1KVA (1000W) kit seems to be user-installable, and matches the available power I've read of in multiple places of up to 900 or 1000 W available from the 12V auxiliary battery. This should be easy to connect. But, part of their low price of the 1000W model seems to come from using a modified sine wave inverter, which is not the cleanest power, and some motors and electronic equipment may not work well with this. A more expensive pure sinewave inverter (like in their 2000W and 3000W kits) would be better

Inverters are a common technology, I bought one elsewhere, a 1500W one to make sure I could handle motor startup surge current (but because mine was not a complete kit, I had to supply my own connecting cables), and for higher loads I might move the inverter to a conventional car with a conventional starter battery with lots of cold-cranking amps to handle surges. When powered by the Prius I plan to keep normal loads below 1000 watts (this includes things I'll want powered for longer periods of time, like my refrigerator and heating system and a few lights). I chose this: 1500W DC to AC Pure Sine Inverter. A safer one if you want to make sure you don't exceed the available power from the 12V battery would be this one: 1000W 12V DC-AC Pure Sine Inverter. I prefer these more expensive pure sinewave inverters to the cheaper modified sinewave ones, because those can potentially overheat and damage some induction motors and sensitive electronic equipment (incandescent lights and heaters should work just fine off modified sinewave).

The various PriUPS kits efforts described previously can get pretty expensive, and require connection to the high voltage battery (and since Converdant says their 2KVA and 3KVA kits need an "experienced hybrid mechanic for the initial installation", I presume those also connect to the HV battery). Since these seem to be better pure sinewave kits, these seem very attractively priced. If they really include all the DC/DC converters and cabling, those prices do look better than building your own by assembling DC/DC converters, and inverter or UPS, and all the cabling. Especially if it's a nice, neat installation that doesn't get in the way of using the cargo area.

If anyone knows any more about the Converdant kits, including pictures of the installation, please let us know. I see from their website that these were just announced on 11/4/11, and they're located in New Hampshire, and also sell plug-in conversion kits, which do seem to be by Plug-in Supply.

 

i guess i did read that wrong. what i was getting at was the point that the base model is a diy thing. it's probably cheaper to get the parts for yourself than buy theirs. the rest of them are directly connected to the main system in some sort of way. (lack of info kills me...)

the thing i worry about is how healthy this is for the car. when i was pulling 900 watts constantly, the engine ran quite often and sounded funny after a while.

i recommend leaving the hood open so things stay cool. it gets really hot in there.

 

Ladies & Gentlemen, Boys & Girls;

I am not yet a Prius owner - I am anxiously awaiting the GenIIIB – the 2012 Liftback. In the meantime I stay caught up here at PriusChat.

In this thread, I have a few questions and comments:

1] Does the Gen3 have a 12v alternator for charging the start battery and running the 12v accessories? If so, then this power source has its own limitations to feeding any kind of load, including inverters.

2] Is this correct? – the ICE can turn a motor/generator and produce high voltages for the traction motor and the traction battery, yes? How high is this voltage, and is it a fixed voltage, or variable for any number of reasons?

My gut feeling is that 1kva (about 1000 watts) of AC is about max with a 12vdc input from an alternator/starter battery system.

If the input to the higher output units (2kva & 3kva) are connected to the higher voltage traction generator/battery, how is that higher/variable voltage handled.

Comments, please – take me to school.

Bill

 

I'd have answered quicker, but it took a bit to remove the distracting color text. I never could get rid of the italics. Sorry, it's my A.D.D. there. To answer your questions (it's about my 23rd time answering this, after lurking here for 7 or 8 years ).
There's NO Prius alternator. The HSD stays charged up via the high voltage system ... which is about 200 volts Gen II and about 73 Volts higher on the Gen III Prius ... and yes, it's constant ... though the highlander and it's cousin the Lexus RX actually DO have variable voltages ... and THEY can vary upward well in excess of 100 volts above the Gen II Prius 200 volts.

If you REALLY want to see how many watts the Prius traction pack can pull, then go HERE (hint ... the traction pack can deliver over 3Kw's 100% duty cycle) and you can check out Richard Factor's web site ... he's pretty much the father of the Prius as a home power source:

The Correct Answer
The Best Laid Plans - PriUPS update 15 Jun 2005
PriUPS Update 26 September 2005

(after you spend at least an hour or so) You'll see that hybrids have been supplying even 240V for over a half decade ... not just 120v as this newbie is doing (maybe). The PriUPS back feeds your service panel. That's much nicer because you don't have to run a bunchy of 120v extensions all over the place. Yep, nothing new under the sun.

.

 

I think Gen III is actually just over 200 volts, the same as Gen II (the Gen III has higher AC motor voltage, but the DC battery is around the same 200 volts).

PriUPS mainly tackles available power from the HV traction battery.

Some others who don't need 3KW have successfully used the 12V battery as the power source, but how much power can safely be drawn off the 12V system is a valid question. Unfortunately Toyota doesn't publish a spec on this. People seem to have taken 3 approaches to this:

1. Try to figure out the maximum load of all the 12V accessories installed on the car, then by keeping all the unessentials turned off (lights, heater, A/C, blower, wipers, rear window defogger, radio, etc.), how much power is available for other uses. This assumes the Prius has adequate 12V capacity to continuously power all its 12V accessories. For past efforts, see here: http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...-dc-converter-fuse-removal-2.html#post1434965 and here: http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...v-battery-what-does-really-feed-directly.html
2. Find the size of the fuses and fusible links protecting the main power bus, and stay below these. I think this may vary by generation, but I think the fuses are around 140 Amps or so. A fuse is a safety limit, not an expected load (if you run a 140A fuse near 140A frequently, you're going to get nuisance fuse blows). Therefore the safe limit is somewhere below this.
3. People have steadily increased the power output until the voltage begins to drop below the "charging" voltage around 13.8 or 14V. This means the power converter is probably maxed out, but doesn't mean it's a safe practice to run it at this limit for an extended time. I'd be concerned about overheating and shortening the component lifetime by running it at its limits, or of the car's inverter coolant overheating while I'm not in the car to respond to the dash display warning (as well as of discharging the 12V battery to the point where the hybrid system shuts down due to 12V power starvation).

Consensus seems to be up to 900 to 1000 Watts may be available from the 12V system if you shut off all unnecessary 12V accessories in the car, but this is unconfirmed by Toyota. My personal preference is to stay somewhat below this, just to play it safe.

For my needs, I've used a P3 - Kill A Watt meter to measure the actual power consumption of what I'd want to run. Most are well below 1000 Watts. I've measured:

• Heating System: 35 Watts (39 VA) - really; it's a modern, high-efficiency system and uses only small motors, many heating systems probably need more power.
• Refrigerator: 209 Watts (303 VA) with the door closed (interior light off) - a smallish refrigerator which probably helps, but the startup load will be higher (can easily be 4X higher, but I don't have a good way to measure).
• A few compact fluorescent lights, - 13 to 20 Watts each

On top of this, I'd like to occasionally run:

• Compact microwave oven (I believe it's a 700 watt output oven): 1035W (1087 VA) - not absolutely essential, but could help out greatly if the power stays out for days, but my gas grill is another option for preparing hot food.
• 230V 1/2 HP Capacitor Start Well Pump (normally on a 230V 15A dedicated circuit): This is the tricky one. I've obtained a used industrial control transformer that can step up 115V to 230V (minus losses, which will be at least 5% since I'm running the transformer in reverse). I tried already running the well pump through this stepup transformer from a 115V 15A household circuit, and it worked through one complete pump cycle (low pressure cutin to high pressure cutout), without tripping the breaker (showing there's hope with a 120V inverter, and bolstered by someone here who says they can run a 1/3 HP pump from a 1000W inverter - I have a 50% larger pump, so I bought a 50% larger 1500W inverter). From the 115V side, I measured going into the transformer 845 Watts (running; startup will be higher), 1253 VA (at a lousy 0.66 power factor, I'm not sure how much of this is due to the transformer) at 214VAC out of the transformer (with 119 VAC in). The well pump is seeing a slightly low voltage, but as long as it always starts, 214V seems safe enough for occasional emergency backup use where I'm not watering the lawn or anything that will keep it running for long periods of time. I think I'd always want to monitor the pump as I run it off the inverter, to make sure it successfully starts and runs, and disconnect if not. I have not tried powering this from my inverter yet.

Both of the above would only be needed occasionally, and the Prius *might* even be able to power these, if I disconnect everything else, but I'm not sure about the startup surge on the pump, and the microwave is a bit above what I'd like (but maybe I can run it at a reduced power setting, which actually just pulses "full power" on and off) - or buy a cheap, lowest-available power microwave just for backup use. I still think I might run the inverter off another car for either of these loads, just to be safe (I don't want to burn out very expensive parts of the Prius; the starting battery on a conventional car might cope with peak motor start loads better, and if I damage the alternator due to overload, the repair bill should be less). But, I think I could keep the refrigerator cold, the house warm, and a couple of lights on for longer periods of time from the Prius, while staying well below the 900 Watts or so consensus says is safe (from my above numbers, I'd mainly stay below 300 Watts).

My next to-do is more wiring on the inverter. The inverter seems to have large capacitors on the battery input, and arcs (makes large sparks) when connecting the cables (even with the inverter "off"). I don't like this. I'm planning to circumvent this with a light bulb. The inverter recommends a 3rd ground wire connection from the inverter chassis to the car chassis. I'll add this as a 3rd, lighter gauge wire (the 2 main battery cables are heavy gauge). I'll also add a 12V light bulb between the inverter chassis ground and inverter battery negative connection. When connecting, I'll connect Red (positive), then my chassis ground (keeping the negative battery cable from touching anything). I expect the light bulb will light as the inverter's internal capacitors charge at a slow rate through the light bulb. Once the light dims and goes out, the capacitors are charged. Then, I'll connect the inverter's Black (negative) cable to the battery, and am then ready to power up the inverter (and the Prius). On disconnecting, hopefully turning the inverter "on" will discharge its internal capacitors so the cables don't arc if the cables touch each other. Otherwise, my lightbulb may discharge the capacitors if (once disconnected from the car) I connect the inverter's red positive to the inverter chassis ground (so the stored charge discharges from the chassis to the inverter negative through the lightbulb again).

 

To Mr hill and Mr Gary in NY, thank you!

What a very informative pair of posts you have provided. I have learned a lot already, even before diving in to the links you listed. I look forward to that hour or more in order to glean a deeper understanding of the Prius drive electronics. From what I know already, I see that the Prius power design is truly fantastic.

Thank you for providing this wealth of info, all on one page of a thread. I will help in directing others to here as their questions arise.

I still am curious about this, however: If the input to the higher output units (2kva & 3kva) are connected to the higher voltage traction generator/battery, how is that higher/variable voltage handled. (Ok, not variable on Prius).

Obviously, an inverter unit powered by the traction battery/generator would need to operate with an input voltage in the 200 to 300 vdc range you described. That is a whole new design aspect that requires a custom made inverter.

I am looking forward to the additional reading.



Oh, and look! A black font that is perfectly vertical!

J

 

This was part of the challenge in the PriUPS project. The author couldn't find an inverter that took 200+ Volts as input, until he discovered large, computer server systems use large UPS units that use large high voltage batteries. Thus, PriUPS uses large (and not very portable) computer UPS units, which include an inverter, as well as battery racks, battery charge controllers, and automatic transfer switches that are not really necessary to the project. Later versions have used conventional inverters, powered by separate DC to DC converters connected to the HV battery. Sometimes, 200V from the Prius is stepped down to 24 or 48 volts by a DC to DC converter, to match the input requirement of an available inverter. This "double conversion" from 200+VDC down to 12, 24, or 48VDC, and back up to 120 or 230VAC seems inefficient, but is what we've had to do with available parts. This is why I'd like to learn more about ConVerdant, I wonder if they have a custom inverter that takes 200+ volts input directly, without all the extra computer UPS battery hardware (so far, nobody here has found one).

The Prius "Inverter" actually has several functions. The main motor/generators MG1 and MG2 are AC motors, but the traction battery is DC. The "inverter" handles the power conversion between motor/generator and traction battery. In addition, the car's inverter steps down (with its own DC to DC converter I believe) some of that power to 12V, to power the 12V electrical system and keep the 12V battery charged. I believe this converter works from the DC traction battery (unconfirmed), because I think there's no high voltage AC for MG1 or MG2 when the car is stationary, but the 12V battery is still charged at this time.

 

I was just going from memory. Then again, I'm no spring chicken like I was - back when we first got our Gen II. Then again ... from Wikipedia, if it matters:

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius[/ame] (under the "battery" heading)

Actually - the most common use for 240v DC to AC backup power supplies are cel sites. There are a WHOLE lot more cel sites than server companies, and/or companies that have their own servers. Our PriUPS actually says, "A.T.T." right on it, even though it was manufactured by the same company that Richard Factor used. But yes, they ARE heavy. Our UPS weighs 400lbs (200lbs for the DC/AC UPS and 200lbs for the battery bank). As for the batteries, they're NOT really that large. If you've ever seen little motor cycle batteries - just big enough to crank start a bike, that's what the 240v DC to AC UPS systems use . . .



. . . they simply put a bunch of small 6v or 12v batteries in series until they get 240 volts. That said, OUR used system actually had TWO banks/cabinets (ie 600lb system) originally. The 1st bank hooked to the 2nd battery bank (in parallel) to double the 240v run time.

The only reason these systems' battery banks weigh hundreds of pounds, is because they're designed to run for EXTENDED times. We needed about an hour (based off our typical kWh usage). But heck you COULD build a FIVE pound 240v pack out of AAA batteries (each weighing less than 1/2 ounce) if you really wanted a short run time

Your PriUPS battery pack only needs to run long enough to hook up your Prius - which then serves to feed the UPS pack with re-charge. So ... batteries? You CAN go light weight - turning on how long you wana go without a prius.

By purchasing our UPS that (originally) contained "2" 200lb battery cabinets (though not needed) it allowed us to find enough good individual batteries to re-assemble a good pack. Our extra 200lb cabinet & battery set went to the recycle joint. These systems are more than most Prius owners would want to deal with - even with a teeny battery set, I'd guess. So I'm hoping this talk of a smaller UPS will actually not be vaporware. DIY can be fun, but quick & easy is still my first choice!

.

 

I was just going by memory too on a couple of points, like HV battery and fuse sizes. I haven't touched my HV battery, so my (also aging) memory could be wrong.

But I did find here on Priuschat that the Gen III battery is similar to Gen II: http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii-2010-prius-main-forum/58241-2010-prius-battery-specs.html (of course, this might be wrong). It seems Gen I was the higher voltage battery: http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-prius-main-forum/6684-tech-specs-hv-battery.html#post69028. It's not very clear which Gen that Wikipedia entry is describing, the "battery" section seems to be in a general section that applies to all versions (which it apparently doesn't).

For those of you who went the full distance and have a real, full-time UPS for your house, then yes you do make full use of all the UPS parts. Some of the later projects don't go to these lengths. I believe the first PriUPS used a Lucent unit (I guess also from a phone system). Since my needs for minimal emergency backup seemed to be mostly satisfied by just a few hundred watts and a temporary hookup with extension cords, I decided I could satisfy this much more easily with a simple inverter attached to the 12V system.

Incidentally, here's another related thread I found while searching this site:
http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii-2010-prius-technical-discussion/89691-dc-converter-specs.html

 

V8Cobrakid, Thanks for the post. Actually, the 1kw kit is good for any synergy based hybrid [toyota, Ford, nissan], but the 2 and 3 kw kits are for prius Gen2 and 3 and the Lexus CT200h.