Plugin Supply kit in Australia

Hi Eric,

Good to see another Aussie doing a PIS converion. I do not understand why you have a blog explaining how to wire a EV switch to a 2nd Gen Prius when the Australian Prius EV switch is factory fitted. Maybe you mean the ICE kill switch. What is the shortcut to your blog? Any photos?

Thanks,

John

 

Hi Eric, I fitted a 2nd user older pis kit a few weeks ago, it's all working well sofar apart from one glitch with the kit / software.
In ev mode or ice kill it works very well,
But, in blended mode, sometimes, after travelling about 10 miles, the charge level of the stock battery gets too high and the ice kicks in to burn off the the excess charge in the battery. At this point I manually turn off the kit until the charge level gets back to 7 bars in the display.

I haven't asked for advice on this yet, but maybe I have to live with it, mainly as the kit is old now and was primarily designed to work with gel batteries not lifepo4.

I am pleased with it though.

I do need to save up for some kind of bms system in time, I am managing at the moment with cell loggers and hvc relay cut off to the charger.

Best regards, anthony.

 

When the kit is turned on, the pis system will automatically turn on ev mode if the conditions are right to do so.

 

Hi Eric,

I am using 76 33ah lifepo4 cells.

I purchased the cells used, as that's all my budget could stretch too, but i did buy over 120 of them.
So, currently I have 76 cells fitted, and I charge these to 3.5v per cell.
I have 76 at the moment as the cells are slightly older technology of lifepo4, and they do sag approx 0.2v under load, but I have read that 76 cells is too many, the higher voltage may damage the stock battery.
My cell resting voltage is 3.3v so my fully charged resting voltage is 250vdc.
When the kit engages, due to the 0.2v sag per cell the kit voltage is now 236vdc, which is ok from what I read, a lot of users use 70 cells but these are newer better quality cells and sag is l was of an issue, the extra cells for me just takes away the effect of the sag under load.

I do intend taking out 1 cell at a time and do a running test until I get to a point where I am happy with the operation of the phev kit.

Regards, anthony.

 

Hi Eric,

It is a gen2 model.

 

Yeap, using a BMS+, you can read all about my conversion Planing CanView and BMS+ conversion with lithium | Page 45 | PriusChat

 

Hi Eric,

Many thanks for that, very kind of you to ask robb at pis for me, much appreciated.

I have run my pis set up with 70 cells, and indeed performance did suffer, I didn't last too long before the pis audible alarm on the rear board was beeping, so I reverted back to 76 cells. I assumed it was due to the voltage sag under load. So back to 76 cells now.

I look forward to following your progress.

I do live in a hilly area, but when the charge level on the stock battery went high I was travelling on a major road doing about 65mph and the k it was running in blended mode. It wasn't too much of an issue,mi just switched it off for a few mile till the charge level went to a level that was normal.

Many thanks, anthony.

 

Hi Erik,

Maybe we did talk at the Canberra EV festival. I spoke to many people that day.

I do not like the idea of hiding everything, like as if you had something to hide and I do not miss the lack of boot space. I still managed to fit 2 x 250watt solar panels in the rear area of my Prius to take home. I prefer to be able to monitor everything visually, if any problem arises it can be detected visually before it can get worse.