Turning old prius into wind Turbine?

I don't want to be a debbie downer but I'm not sure it's feasible. There's an awful lot of software behind those electronics and it's all written specifically for an automobile with an engine and two motors. I'd imagine it can technically be done, but it seems like it would be a lot of hacking (both physical and software).

 

Na, just mount it on a tall pole and replace the front tires with big propellers! The ICE can be left in place to create a cool breeze on those hot stagnet days!

 

You don't need to replace the tires. The Prius already has two cooling fans in the front, so all you need is a tower high enough to get it into the jet stream.



Tom

 

How do you figure its useful life is up yet you still have the engine and HSD system working? Do you mean when you grow tired of it?

 

I have a second gen I have been thinking of doing this to. It was in a rear impact, bought it for the front clip and interior.

My idea was to remove the engine and just use the transaxle/inverter however the software would be an issue the other issue is the prius battery does not have the Amp capacity to run for long. So you would have to make two banks of 12v batteries possibly 3. Charge/Cool/Active Draw.

 

If you just spin either motor generator around inverter will produce dc-voltage to filter caps. Voltage depends on rpm. But it will work more efficiently. So if your use has constant enough rpm and you can choose battery voltage or generator rpm it will work. Inverter will be just acting as a diode pack in this so it could just be replaced with diode pack.

If it needs to produce constant voltage trough big rpm range it’s probably easiest to use power components of inverter but just build new controller to control them.

 

Is that something you've confirmed? I wouldn't be surprised if at least some minimal circuit to drive the IGBTs in time with the resolver signals would be needed before there was any useful output.

For information on maximum sustained power capacities, RPMs, temperatures, etc., the ORNL teardown report is probably very useful.

-Chap

 

You don’t need complicated circuit to take power out from motor generators just 6 diodes is enough.

I’ll have to correct my older post by saying that it sends voltage to filter caps. It just uses the reverse parallel diodes of the IGBTs. But if you just wanted to build some simple generator you could just use diode pack.

 

We had a customer need a transaxle for his prius because he hit something and cracked the case. We took it apart and I have both MG1 and MG2 as well as the power split device with the stators/planetary gears. There's not much to the internals of the transaxle. All that I've already said, the differential, and the pump. The controller is the inverter. However, with wind as the motive force, the system would just be in full regen. You don't need the inverter for that. Unless you want to spin the turbine on a windless day for some dumb reason. Although, you could just spend less time/money on solar panels or a pre-made wind turbine.