Hello Everyone; I have a quick question about the amount of energy needed to recharge the HV battery on the prius. Think of it as the amount that is produced from braking that recharges the HV battery. Anyone knows and would like to share?
On my 2010 I see the regen braking on my ScanGaugeII go as high as 100A at roughly 220-230VDC at the HV battery. Is this what you are looking for?
If you are considering for some reason charging your HV battery, there are a number of things to keep in mind. Although the Prius puts large currents into the Prius battery this is usually of short duration. Cooling is paramount and for continuous charging 500 ma should be considered a safe limit. The Prius never fully charges the battery "it's limited to 80%" as this shortens it's life and at full charge thermal runaway is very likely. The Prius also limits discharge to 40% again to give it a long life. The risk of electric shock causing death is ever present when dealing with high DC voltages, more so than AC. It is quite easy to build a charger for the battery, but safe handling is not so easy. John (Britprius)
Oh my interest is in attempting to double(more if possible) the energy gained during braking/coasting so that it will charge the battery more and in turn rely on fuel a bit less.
This is already maximised. Doubling the current will double the rate of speed reduction and decrease the efficiency of the amount the battery will store, even if the generators could safely produce that current and the battery handle it. John (Britprius)
H I, Britprius. Is it possible to measure the current capacity of a module using a DVM? Would want to know if that's possible. I still can't get that done while charging my modules. Thanks sir!
Sorry to bring up this old topic but has anyone had the idea that the standard battery pack might be possible to charge with DC power at home and be used partially as a Phev for a few miles after leaving with full change for short distances? I am thinking about feeding the Inverter with some power supply module that would get higher voltage DC (200-300V) from converting home AC power into DC. My idea is to try and use something like this one in order to see if the inverter would accept this current as if it was comming from the generator-motor: Example Specs: Output Power: 1000W Input Voltage: AC100-120V or AC200-240V Output Voltage: 0-300V DC Adjustable (predefined before ordering) Max Output Current: 3.33A Frequency: 47-63Hz Dimension: 240*125*65 mm I think I might be able to get some cable harnesses and other parts from an inverter from some junkyard Prius and try to make my own PHEV charging system in the garage. Any idea if this has been tried before without using a ready built conversion kit similar to the Enginer ones?
It would be no use connecting to the inverter, because the battery isolates itself when the car is off. You would have to make the connections at the battery and arrange for charge control yourself. (Unless you were planning to have the car in READY while doing strange inverter things.) Incentive for proper charge control:
Thank you. My idea was to feed electric power to an original prius inverter-converter somehow with the car computer powered on and connected to it. So that it would perform the charging control with its original programming. Only without using fuel burned by the internal combustion engine (ICE). I want to replace the power comming from the rotating generator motors with power comming from the grid. I was thinking about putting current somehow on the input side of the converter and letting it deal with modifying and sending the needed amount of power back to the hybrid battery. I was planning to try and find a junkyard converter and harnesses to do connect to the battery for this job - and if it was to fail - I would not get the car electronics burned or damaged by some wrong wiring. But still it was only an idea that might be not worth it comparing the costs of parts with the low mileage it would provide on the standard hybrid battery. If charging this way turned to be possible I was then planning to parallel fit a second battery in the trunk to extend the range for some daily town trips. I am not really sure if I would actually try to do it but where I live scrap parts can be quite affordable and it might be worth trying. If I am to input power to a different inverter-converter - then I may not need the DC power source. The grid we have works at about AC 220-240V. One problem is that I don't know what the average current is that comes from the motor generator in normal slow-down conditions when driving. This is why I was thinking about somehow feeding power that was already turned into DC. I thought this section in the forum was most suitable for sharing and discussing this idea.
I really think you're overthinking this way too much. You can connect directly the HV battery and charge it there. The point is you will not be able to drive this in any way at all like a PHEV as the design of the Prius is to use ICE and the electric motors in synergy. You would probably get 2 km of electric-only drive, then you will have depleted the HV battery completely. From here you would be using fuel to run the ICE and recharge the HV battery and probably wipe out any benefit from your short EV portion.
In the past, people added more batteries. But the fact that it is not done on a large scale should tell you that it is not an endeavor that has huge gains. One of the simplest methods was an extra battery that would constantly supply a high voltage to the HV battery, constantly charging it. The car would measure the HV battery being full and do more EV driving. Here's a link from long ago explaining it. This is probably a more condensed article. The Prius battery in and of itself is just too small.
