Charged HV battery with my gasoline generator :)

This is my first post. I've been reading other threads for a couple weeks and thought I'd contribute something.

I just finished replacing my head gasket. Then the car wouldn't start because the hybrid battery got drained too far over the last 4 months sitting their not being used. I scratched my head a bit trying to figure out how to recharge it. Then I realized I could use my gasoline generator, a large bridge rectifier, and some large capacitors to produce the higher DC voltage that I needed to recharge it. I already had used this setup before earlier on to charge my LiFePO4 lithium battery bank for my off grid solar system. Only difference this time was that I needed to adjust the generator's AC output voltage on its voltage regulator to produce just the right DC voltage I needed. It worked great!

I set the generator to output 182v AC which produced 272v DC after going through the rectifier and capacitors. This is what was measured without any load on it before I connected it to the battery pack. My battery pack was at 218v DC when I first started charging it. I measured 240Watts of charging power after it started charging. I only charged it for maybe 5 minutes at the most which brought the battery up to 225v while charging. This was enough to get the car's engine started and allow it to finish charging the hybrid battery.

The car charged the battery up to 242 volts DC after it started up. It's about 34 degrees here in Idaho so I didn't bother powering on the battery pack's cooling fan for only a couple minutes of charging. But this should be done normally if you charge for longer periods of time in warmer weather.

The two capacitors I used were rated at 500volts and 8200uF. Rectifier was way bigger than necessary as I only pulled less than 2 amps through it. Generator is rated at 10kw.

Anyways, thought I'd share this. I posted a Short video on YouTube but can't share it here yet. My channel name is SpoonerTuner and video title is "Charged Dead Prius HV Battery With My Generator"

Hope this helps or inspires someone.

 

Thank you. Had to find a way to get it running somehow. haha

That's awesome you were able to snag Prius up cheap and drive them off like that. I was hoping mine would have been an easy fix, but not so much. haha I'm having to fix/replace the head gasket, combination meter, HV battery and 12v battery. But, I've learned a lot in the process.

As brainy as I am sometimes, I can over look the simplest things. haha Like you said, the HV battery probably was not the problem. The combination meter was one issue causing the gauges to not light up in really cold weather. But the main problem was that I didn't know how to start up a Prius correctly. I wasn't pressing the brake peddle before hitting the Start button. And the third problem that I caused for myself was that I didn't fully lock in the service plug grip and assumed it wouldn't make a difference if it wasn't fully locked down. I didn't have a scan tool the other day or I probably would have figure it out sooner. These Prius are a different kind of animal for sure.

Now I have no more OBD2 codes or warning lights after I cleared the codes with my new bluetooth Panlong OBD2 Scanner and test drove it a couple times. I also tested the HV battery today with the Dr. Prius app and block #8 in the middle is out of spec and not charging up as fast as the other blocks do. And the entire battery pack tested with only 25% of its usable capacity left in it. So I'm going to pull it out and cycle the modules and replace any that don't come back up enough.

I did order a MEAN WELL HLG-480H-C1400AB LED light power supply for $160 that arrived today to use as a charger. But they sent me the wrong one. It will charge at 480W and is fully adjustable for constant current and constant voltage. So, I can use it for a other non-Prius projects too.

I also bought a HiTEC X4 AC PRO charger for cycling the individual modules.