Hurricane Sandy - I love my Prius!

I have one of the APC UPS units, and I checked its charging current, it is under 2 amps. The voltage tops out at 220 volts, so there is no issue of damaging the battery due to lack of a BMS. The maximum voltge is significantly under that the Prius sees in normal use. The Prius really has a primitive BMS, only temperature monitoring, and voltage monitoring of the 6 volt modules. With the APC'slow charge current, there is no risk of temperature rise, and there is no more risk of unbalance then in normal Prius operation, except that if it occurs, you will not know, wheresas in the Prius you will get a DTC.

 

And, the sky could fall!

 

as well as tail gate party's , Picknicks, exploring, power for work situations, outer space travel, you name it, It's handy.

 

The charging voltage can be adjusted via a special programming mode, if needed. Up or down. In my case one of the batteries in my 22 kw lead-acid battery bank went bad so I lowered the charging voltage by 12 volts so I could keep using the rest. The UPS thinks it is charging at 218 volts but really it is charging to 206. So adjustments could be made for the Prius battery too.

A note about the charging amps, I found some technical documentation which says the SURT battery charger is good for "350 watts", so at 192 volts nominal that would translate to just under 2 amps. Your measured charge rate would confirm this.

 

I did that with mine already - my wife came late to a camping trip so we had our truck and Prius there, so I threw the UPS in the trunk before she came. Used the Prius to power the microwave, etc.

 

Could somebody explain to me: What is a UPS, why is it needed when using the Pip and a inverter, advantage of ?

 

UPS - Uninteruptable Power Supply.

 

Thank You, and......

 

And now you can Google

-Tapatalk

 

Questions from Post 86 not answered . Subject was brought up on this thread. Not google.

 

Oh, now I understand the rest of your question. The UPS battery voltage is similar to the Prius traction pack voltage. You can connect the UPS directly to the tracktion battery, and depending on the UPS get a lot more power then you can get with an inverter off the 12 volts, which is limited to 1.2 KW. (100 amps, 12 volts)

 

O K, now I see the connection, providing one can hook up to the traction battery. TY

 

No, more than that. The 1.2kw is real time draining without popping a fuse. If you need, say 2kw, just hook up a UPS with the capacity of 2kw. You just do the calculation per time, but at least you have the capacity to support something that is power hungry. UPS is a safety buffer and support higher kilowatts.

 

No time calculation needed, and the UPS is not a "safety buffer". I don't use the UPS's batteries when it is attached to the Prius, the Prius is the only DC source of power. No different than a 1 kw inverter attached to the 12 volt system, just in this case it is attached to the 201.6 volt system. It will run for as long as there is gas in the gas tank, which for my house's typical loads is about 2 1/2 days.

 

New info - additional brands/models of UPS, and an inverter, that are compatible with the Prius traction battery. I added the info to the end of the thread linked in my signature.

 

If you look inside most inverters, they consist of a flyback stage to generate some intermediate HV rail followed by a fullbridge thing to generate 60Hz modified sine. Not sure what that rail is at (56V?) Am wondering what it would be like to just dump the traction 200V into a telecom brick (48-72ish volts at buku amps) and push that into the fullbridge. Actually, I think Hobbit did that a few years ago with a 48V UPS?

There are bricks that take 170-300VDC in and can generate an isolated 48V, which happens to be right smack in the middle of where the traction battery sits. So, you have a nice isolated 'safe' midrail that you can easily pull >2kW from.

Pulling 2kW from the traction battery continuously is not too excessive if you watch SoC closely. Actually ~3kW on that continuously is not really an issue as the AC compressor does that when it's really hot. Many have experienced this, I did that on the way back from vegas in august once, decided to head back home 'early', by 11am it was >102degF, stuck on the 15 going like 2MPH... Terrible MPG, but the car survived.

Ok, taking that further. Since the gate drives for MG1/MG2 are exposed to the HVECU, I'm pretty sure that the gate drives for AC are also exposed. Since that one has accessible wiring, I'm wondering whether it would be easier to erm.. 'borrow' those. I don't dare try this, but it's food for thought.

 

Toyota themselves said years ago that 3 kw continuous was fine. Richard over on priups.com thinks up to 6 kw is fine shorter-term based on his tests. Well above that is ok for starting surges. No need to keep an eye on SOC since the Prius' computer will start the engine as-needed.

I agree the AC is about 2-3 kw based on my indirect tests. Haven't done any clamp meter testing, would take some digging to do that.