Using PIP As A Generator

Yes, I saw that, I followed the link and I liked that option. I never said I didnt. I simply said Id like the whole house generator option that was posted in another thread as well.

 

ok

 

And look, they have a lock for the charging cable as well! http://toyota.jp/service/option/dc/webitem?car_code=priusphv-b_00002&kind_cd=03

 

No, you might have wanted to say 170W, But that is NOT 170 Wh, but rather 120 kWh (per month). 3.91 kWh each day * 30.4 days in each month = 118 kWh per month.

I understand that these units are confusing. A Watt is a joule per second, or energy per unit time, or power. A Watt-hour is a energy per unit time * time, or energy. Thus 1 Watt-hour (energy) = 3600 Joules (energy). A kiloWatt-hour (energy) = 3,600,000 Joules (energy). 1 kWh per month (power) = 1.37 Watts (power).

 

cool!

 

Seems to me that this is more an issue for your house's electrical wiring and not the PiP. You basically want a 2-way outlet, not a 2-way traction battery.

 

Sorry, "the Voltage coming out would be 120 all the time."

 

gahh parallel conversations!
um, yeah, I just wanted to say I use 170 W per hour on average. So that's why I said 170W/h. But then SageBrush said he didn't know what unit that was.
But yeah. It's actually just 163 Watts

 

Technically, outlets don't care on which side of them the draw is. HOWEVER, your electric company most assuredly DOES! You could plug you inverter into a plug in your house and run your appliances off it, BUT if your main breaker is closed, you will also be electrify the lines outside and possibly electrocute repair crews! Know what you are doing before engaging in this! Or run any loads off an extension cord plug directly into the inverter.

 

Ah.
I guess my point remains that the "infrastructure" needed to make this happen must be built in the house, not the PiP. The PiP is already capable and there's no need to wait for a "second revision" or whatever to get that capability.

 

I dont feel like find it for you but in one of the two threads that I read that previously discussed the prototype Toyota EVSE, someone said that the pip only allowed electric to flow in one direction, IN. As they are currently set up it is not possible to have current flow out of the j1772 port. This could be wrong but thats what it said. The fact that this adapter is now available, or soon will be, means maybe they are wrong. Or maybe there are other modifications required in order to use the adapter. I dont know.
Regardless, a lot of these options are brand new and just starting be released or presented. Unless we ourselves do the research or build the system personally we are all speculating based on info that we find. Without actually using a unit or building one we cant say with 100% certainty what is rumor or what is truth.

 

yeah, I remember reading that too

 

Sure. The prototype also had the charge port in a different location and separated the HV and EV battery packs. The production model doesn't; why would we expect the statements about the directionality of the flow to still be valid as well?

 

You should have said 170 watts.

 

Also, as noted, the EVSE is not bidirectional, only the charge port is. The pic I showed you came straight from Toyota Japan PHV page, so I'm not sure why we would ever consider this a "rumor"
http://toyota.jp/priusphv/001_p_002/charge/index.html (scroll way down)

 

nothing new about this post, it's already been established that the adapter is available in japan

 

Obviously, the inverter would provide 120V for the North American market. 100V is the standard residential voltage in Japan. They are the only country using 100 V; everyone else uses either 240 (more or less) or 120. Kind of like until recently, Japan had their distinctive deployment of the CDMA cell phone protocol which used the same frequency as in North America, but with the transmit and receive sub-bands reversed.

And yes, plugging a power source into a home outlet, would be extremely dangerous for the utility workers. Since transformers work either way, the step down from, say, 7200V to 240 V would work in reverse to step the 240V UP to 7200 V. There are switches designed for this purpose which switch the house mains between the utility and the alternate power source, so the alternate source can never get to the utility lines.

 

This is a fascinating discussion and it reminds me of the PriUPS discussion from 2005 -2007, which used the earlier generation Prius as a platform. It's all over Google as well.

Frankly, I think the idea has great merit for all kinds of reasons (I am in the powerless path of Hurricane Sandy as we speak). The Atkinson cycle of the PiP's engine has me thinking whether it would be more suitable for a stationary "intermittent generator" mode than the Otto cycle engines.

In late 2007 I installed photovoltaic panels on my house roof (just before the $2000 tax credit ceiling got eliminated - grrrr). I had a choice of a straight net-metering installation or a battery-backup to net-metering installation. i chose straight net metering as my part of Northern Virginia rarely had power failures and, per multiple multi-year neighbors, "never longer than 15 minutes". Well, now we've had two major & sustained power failures in four months because of new weather patterns, one of which lasted six days for our block and today's already lasting 24 hours.

Rather than reconfiguring my house system and keeping the ever-weakening lead batteries in the small basement, I would love to throw a transfer switch and plug in the PiP for the 3 or 4 dedicated survival circuits, like the fridge and the tankless water heater etc. Especially since during every blackout my roof PVs just sit there making DC power for no gain to anyone now until the power net comes back up.

To me the question is not "why not buy a generator" since we have already bought one - the PiP, and which is actually easy to live with in a small, old, tightly packed neighborhood. The question is more "who will see the market niche and gin this up as a semi-integrated solution". That nameless tinkerer will have me as one of the 1st customers.

 

On the archives for Gen 2, there were quite a few that tapped the 12V to run a inverter for the house, also For camping. Leave the car in ready, 12v stays charged by HV, HV stays up by engine cycling. YES, It would be great if built in. According to these threads, car used a gallon of gasoline overnight.

 

Agree totally, one other big advantage with the Prius is the engine only runs periodically.