First Enginer PHEV Installation in Portland Or Area

Jan 4th 2010
Hi Everyone,
I got all a full charge yesterday. I was within 90mv of a balancer alarm at one point. I had as much as an amp going through my Buddy Cell jumpers so they really help. I would encourage everyone with a 4kwhr Enginer system to do buddy cells.

This is the data from that charging cycle. You can see the fist hour is 15a-16a constant current. The rest is 55.5v-55.6v constant voltage. I see no significant trickle charge at the end, although I could see the cell balance recovering from the fast charging during the last 5 minutes or so. The critical time for the possibility of a runaway overcharged cell appeared to be when the current was at 4a-6a within the last ½ hour.

The balancers ran over night and so now all cells are within 10mv at 3.345v per cell. This resting voltage is only 15mv above where I started but it is a resting voltage so it cannot be used to infer SOC. I assume I am still towards the top side of SOC.

I checked all of my connections during charging with a heat gun. They were all good at about 60degF. The Balancers were at 80degF and the charger was at 90degF-100degF.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Jan 5th 2009
Hi Everyone,
I put the empty box into my Gen3 car to check the fit. I moved one cable and cut off the tip of the duct. I did not get a picture but I will do that when I get the box back into the car with batteries.

I could not take my Gen3 car out of service because my wife uses that car. So I started working on my Gen2 car using the Gen3 kit. I will post a parallel thread in the Gen 2 section about that using the same title as this thread.

When I get back to working on the Gen3 car, I will continue this thread.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Dutch,
Yes I saw that. At the time it was more complcated than I wanted to do. But now maybe It is appropriate. I will experimant a little more to see the effect of temperature and then I might do the Hack.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello Andrew and Dutch,
If you want to discuss this further please start a separate thread. This thread is intended to discuss a 4kwhr Enginer kit being installed into a Gen3 Prius. Right now the kit is running in a Gen2 Prius for evaluation. When I get the rest of my parts I will move it to my 2010 car.

Here is the link to the Gen2 thread.
First Enginer PHEV install in the Portland Or area, Gen2

By the way, I am not planning to install the temperature hack in either my Gen2 or Gen3 car.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello Everyone,
I got my 2nd and 3rd kit late in February. Then I took vacation and then Balanced and Capacity Paired the cells in my first kit. This all took some time. I then made cables to be able to have both the CellLogs and DB8s working at the same time.

After all that, I finally got around to finishing the install in my 2010 Prius.

Today I got to drive it for the first time. I got 83.1mpg for 21.2 miles. I also have a kit installed in a 2005,so these comments compair those two systems. I found that the 2010 prius is not as friendly for doing maximum EV. But it is better than the 2005 at using the electric motors at a little higher speed. I did find that I was able to move along a little faster. I expect that with a little practice I will do better.

I have the CellLogs and alarms out were I can use monitor them with out opening the deck. I will need to work on cleaning this up.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello again,
Today I did a short drive and got much better results. I learned that I need to not worry about the EV button so much in the Gen3, but instead drive with a light foot. Below 42mph it is easy to run electric only.

Also I am charging without alarms. A couple of cells do get up to 3.8v but then the overcharge protection keeps them at that level till the charger turns off. I set the alarms at 3.85v so that this can work but also so that I will not be in danger of the damage that can happen up at 4v.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Everyone,
My brother has a Gen1 so today I had him drive the Gen 3 with the Enginer kit. I discovered that the driver really has a lot to do with getting the best performance out of the kit. I was getting better than 90mpg but he got 80mpg on the same road.


Here is 5 days of history. I drove several other days but did not capture the data. The green bars are the total distance riving and the blue bars is the calculated savings in terms of miles.

On day 5 My brother drove 1/2 of that drive.

It is important to realize that we need to relearn optimum driving after installing a PHEV kit.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello Everyone,
The next day after my brother(80mpg) drove my Gen3 with PHEV, I drove it(83mpg) and did better but not as good as before.

Then my wife drove(60mpg) for 2 days and did very poorly. She just gets in and drives. She uses the heater and defroster and does not turn them off unless she gets too hot.

Then I drove one day(70mpg) and when my wife asked for defrost I turned on the heater and forgot to turn it back off for 10 miles.



I have two thoughts on this.
1. The Prius is set for "just drive it like a normal car" if it is stock. Once you add a PHEV kit, you no longer get the best mileage if you just drive it like a normal car. The driver needs to be retrained and needs to pay attention to what he is doing in order to get 80-100mpg. These high mileages are doable but only with an experienced driver paying attention to optimization.
2. In the Gen3 Prius with a PHEV kit added, Its all about heat. I will start another thread to discuss this concept.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Again,
On my last 2 drives I got around 88mpg on each. So I have re-learned how to optimize this system. The more amazing thing is that my wife is learning it also. She got 77mpg with no instructions from me.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi everyone,
Here is a chart updating my system performance.

I or my wife drive the car 4-5 times a week. The average for both of us is about 80mpg over a distance of 30-35 miles. I drive about 2/3 of the time. The system is running correctly with very little need for adjustments.

I turn on the record function on the CellLogs in the morning and then do a top-off charge. During the day we drive as normal. Most days we are fully using the capacity of the Enginer system. After the drive I plug in the charger. In the evening I download the CellLog data.

I have one cell a little out of balance. I think it is causing me to loose about 7% from the optimum capacity of the system. At this point I am not worrying about that 7%. In a couple of weeks I will probably do an adjustment to see if I can make that capacity usable.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello everyone,
I have disconnected the DB8 balancers. I used a 6v car charger to charge the cell that went low first. I did this 3 times for a short time on each charge. I drove the car and checked the balance at the bottom each time.

Then I started draining a little out of the top cell at the end of each charge. After about a week The system is manually balanced to the point that the CellLogs are not giving me any alarms. I am really happy with the system now. It is being driven most every day with no problems.

Thanks,
Dan