Toyota AC Outlet Supply Accessory (Not charging cable)

no idea, should be in the service manual.

 

What was the verdict? I read through this thread after finding the accessory on OP found in Japanese Toyota Prius PHV website. This accessory is called "vehicle power connector" and is standard accessory that comes with Japanese Prius PHV. Even if it works on US Prime, I don't think I would pay $600+ for this, but maybe if I can find it much cheaper at Yahoo! Auction. But not if I have to mod US Prime mod to install an inverter.

 

it doesn't work.

 

In order to have 110v a/c, you will need, at they very least, an inverter. It seems unlikely that the battery's 200 volts is available at the charging plug, so plugging some kind of dongle in is not going to do anything. Since this is a Japan only accessory, they may do things differently over there.

 

Just want to share a link I found relating to this topic. A 1500W DC to AC inverter from Toyota.
DC-AC Inverters | Toyota Industries Corporation
Would be nice if we can buy and install this inverter.

 

I think Japanese version of Prius Prime (or Prius PHV) is equipped with an inverter as standard.

 

presuming the pack is relatively full when a storm /earthquake, power poll vs auto collision etc happens, & your home is drawing a relatively small amount of power (fridge cycling, a few lights, a TV, modum, router - maybe averaging 1kW), what do you get .... maybe 3-4hrs of power? Well - better than candles ... or sittin' in the dark.
.

 

that's it, with a full tank of gas?

 

Agreed, BUT...

The highlighted section means that the factory 1500 inverter is a Modified Sine Wave unit.

A modified sine wave inverter sucks at running modern devices like cell phone chargers, computer/tablet chargers, & virtually
anything with a microchip. A *true* sine wave unit is needed to operate any of the above stated devices.


Rob43

 

What does a modified Sine wave look like?

 

Imagine a perfectly curvy wave versus a wave that looks like continuing up & down staircases. There you go.

.

 

^ Hill nailed it.

That *staircase* really screws with modern electronics, a lot of chargers won't even charge your device and the arrow
pointer on a computers track pad will act crazy by darting everywhere when connected to modified sine wave.


Rob43

 

That’s a crazy waveform. I’ll stick with my sawtooth.

 

Did it work on the American Prius?

 

You are not going to get his reply. He has not been here almost 6 years.
bowang was last seen: Mar 30, 2017

In any case, the adaptor does not work on the NA models of PP. It is only an optional gadget that works on Japanese models.

 

Crazier: you might be looking at the red waveform in that picture, but the typical "modified sine" inverter produces the blue one. It only switches between three levels: zero, +peak, zero again, −peak.



It's cheap to build that inverter because it doesn't need to produce any intermediate voltage levels. It only switches off and on (with two polarities).

If not for the time it spends sitting at zero between humps, it would be a true square wave.

With any wave, there's more than one way you can measure it. For example, you can measure its peak height. Or you can measure its RMS value, telling you what DC voltage would do the same amount of work.

For a true sine wave, the peak reading is the RMS reading times √2. So North American household outlets give you 60-cycle AC at 120 volts RMS, same as 170 volts peak. That's nominal, anyway: both the RMS and the peak voltages are given certain allowable ranges.

Different wave shapes have different relationships between RMS and peak. The game a "modified sine" inverter has to play is to find a shape (by picking the right length of time to sit at zero between the humps) such that both its RMS and its peak values will squeak by in their allowable ranges (the high end of one range and the low end of the other). This StackExchange answer goes into how that's done:

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/625091

Now, if you've got a regular waveform that isn't a sine wave, Fourier expansion tells us it's mathematically ... a bunch of different sine waves added together. Waveforms with sharp corners, especially, are lots and lots of different sine waves. Of course, that isn't how the inverter produces it (it's just turning switches on and off), but that's what it's producing, anyway.

If the goal is to just imitate one sine wave at 60 Hz, the "total harmonic distortion" just tells you how much of the output is in waves other than the one you want. For "modified sine" it's around 35%. That is, you think this inverter is giving you 120 volts of 60 Hz AC, but 35% of its output is on frequencies like 180 Hz, 300 Hz, and other higher ones, not 60 Hz at all.

 

A true sine inverter does even less - it only switches between + and - (no zero). It just does it way faster using pulse-width-modulation. It looks like this:



The big reason a true sine inverter is more expensive is that it has to turn that square wave into that sign wave using a *filter*. That filter is usually composed of L's and C's (inductors and capacitors) and those can actually be quite expensive.

 

hopefully this is all moot, if the n/a version comes with outlet on gen 5.

 

I'd like to hope that, but then #69 kind of poured water on that hope, with the press release that suggested the earlier Gen 4 version (in the markets that have it) was only "modified sine".

So unless they have upgraded that aspect for Gen 5, you may end up getting an outlet, but the kind you don't want.

There are some choices in how it does the switching. Switching losses can be held down by holding one side of the H-bridge on through an entire half cycle and just diddling the other one off and on a bunch of times, then doing the same with the other transistor pair for the next half cycle.



So the switching really is between + and zero (a bunch of times) and then between − and zero (a bunch more times).

All those little kicks keep a current rolling through the big inductor, like this:



... and after filtering the output:



Those pics (and more details) are in this thread:

My install and review of the ConVerdant LFI30-220 3kVA Pure Sine Wave Inverter for Backup Power | PriusChat

 

Yeah, if it's a 3-level system, or a 2-level system in a 3-phase configuration you will have a zero. In these cheap single-phase systems, that's not common.