Adding a 12v Circuit - Front Dash

First, I would like to thank everyone for all the information on this forum. I acquired a 2007 Gen 2 Prius from my daughter, who bought it used. This forum helped me to buy tires (up sized to P185/85-R14), condition the battery (Prolong), replace the touch screen on the MFD ($15 replacement off ebay from China has a slight rainbow that I can live with), figure out a problem with the cruise control switch (clock spring), and now adding a 12v circuit.

I needed to add an always on 12v circuit so I could easily attache a Batter Minder to maintain the 12v battery. That led me to adding a 12v socket information here. While replacing the touch screen on the MFD, I looked at adding the 12v socket. I noticed an unused fuse location, and thought I would share the information here.

Just above the fuse block that you can access from under the dash, there is more fuses above that you can get to by removing panels (follow instructions to replace the MFD for information on removing the dash panels). With the dash panel removed, you will also need to remove a metal cover plate (3 screws). - See First Picture

With the metal cover removed, there was an empty fuse location, just to the right of the blue wire. - See Second Picture.

See Third Picture for a close up of empty fuse location.

The top spade is the hot line. You can connect to it with a 1/4 female spade connector. The last picture shows the blue spade attached to the fuse block, and 12 volts when the car is off. The black probe of the volt meter is attached to the metal frame where the metal cover was attached that you had to remove. You can use a ring connector to one of the metal cover screws for your negative line.