Need advice from electronics guys about installing a power inverter and EBH.

This will kill your battery very rapidly. The necessary solar panel necessary will be larger than your car roof. Even an AC-powered trickle charger won't keep up with the EBH.

 

Ditto fuzzy1. It can't be done, or rather if you do do it it will kill the 12V battery in a day.

225W = 12V @ 19 Amps = dead battery in a few hours.

 

The EBH is actually 400 Watts. Not even remotely practical!

I don't know exactly what you're trying to accomplish. There is no need to use a EBH unless the temperature is very low, below 0F. Even then it's not necessary. I never use mine, though I did test it a few times. It's actually not powerful enough to do much even at 400W. When it's cold that is.

 

For competitive hypermilers, an EBH is useful for fuel savings at all temperatures, even in summer. But it is not a driving necessity in most climates, so this becomes a tradeoff between fuel savings and the hassle factor.

But to save fuel, the heater must be powered by an external electric source not powered by automotive fuel. Using the car to power its own EBH is like having a hydroelectric dam pump its own water back uphill so it can run through the turbines again. Nothing is gained, it just wastes energy and money. (I'm not talking about hydro pumped storage to time shift energy from another plant.)

 

I am still thinking about how to design a poor man's EBH but in the meantime I think you may want to start with front grill blocking and take a look at (efusco's ?) under the hood insulation pics and such to retain heat. Also go with say 0-20 Mobil-1 for those cold Cornell nights to simulate warmer lube oil. Someone recently posted impressive cold flow data on Toyota 0W-20 synthetic oil although it is unclear if that is true. If it is true I may get me some for next winter. Guess my idea for a poor mans EBH is something like a 60-watt lite bulb under the car so the heat rises...but did not take it too far as you can see.

PS- I am into LED's these days...what can we do with some infra-RED LED's?

 

For this use, IR-LEDs will have no advantage over incandescent IR. It is the raw heating power that is needed. I doubt either could match a traditional EBH of similar power, because only the EBH is inside the engine block.

When struck by -40F while vacationing in a previous car, I did use your trouble light idea under the car, combined with cardboard blocking the grill and a blanket on top the engine. And since the light was not at risk of overheating, I put in 100W. I think it all helped a bit, but an EBH would have helped much better. The area shop had the part, but the installers were already fully booked with other customers with the same idea.

 

You could use this inverter as long as you keep the ignition on.

 

Yes, a -true- BLOCK HEATER consumes 700-1500 Watts. The Prius 400W one does nothing on a -20 deg night. It does speed up the warmup process when the ambient temps are above 50F. This will get you through the stages to good fuel economy perhaps 10 min. quicker. At the cost of three hours of 400W power consumption. What's that, at most $1 worth? What's it save in fuel? I doubt it saves $1. Prove me wrong!

 

Why invert the power? An EBH shouldn't care about AC vs DC.

Why do it at all? You are going to waste more fuel warming the engine with the EBH than you would just running the engine to warm it up.

 

If you could have made your idea work it would have been cheaper to just let the engine run. The way you wanted to do it, you have to run the car to charge the battery, then you discharge the battery into the inverter, which powers the EBH. EVERY ONE of those steps looses energy.
So if you just ran the engine you would only loose a little energy in that one step.
But it would never work anyway because NO car battery has enough power to run a block heater. Keep in mind the block heater has to run for three hours before you want to drive away!
Running the engine for about 10 min. will warm up the car better than that three hour block heater run. It would take having the car in "ready" for an hour or so to recharge the battery (if the battery could hold enough power to do what you wanted). So it's cheaper to just run the engine.

How about a remote starter? Though if you are just trying to get better mileage, that is not a good option. Warm clothing is the best in that case.

 

...non-plug in option - just brainstorming - get a Coleman catalytic heater for $35 runs on a small CNG cylinder. Find a way to get this under hood. Hack into Coleman switch to allow automated start-up via 12v timer circuit. Throw some insulation over engine. Don't burn your car down.

 

This works only if your electricity comes from a cheap grid, which nearly all of us have. Making that electricity with your car will always cost more, and use more fuel, than can be saved by having an EBH-warmed engine.

 

The block heater on my older car is also 400W. As was the one that a Montana dealer offered (but had no open time slots to install) on the previous car. Do you folks up north of the Arctic Circle, across the street from Santa's Workshop, get stronger ones?

After my brief experience at -41 in the old car without EBH, it seemed that even a small temperature rise from the block heater would make a big difference in starting ease.

Your electricity costs $0.80/kwh?