Stupid question: How you can plug in inverter?

Let me see if I understand the question. You would like to plug three phase mains directly into the inverter in order to charge the HV battery?

Please don't do this.

It is generally highly discouraged to charge the HV battery by any external means. Some people have built special HV power supplies, or used old physics lab HV power supplies, to charge their batteries, but the risk is high relative to the benefit. If you are very, very serious, then you should look into an aftermarket plug-in conversion of your car, or sell your car and use the money build your own electric vehicle.

 

I'd like a way to use my car as an oversized boom box without having the ICE turn on. I buy and sell cars for fun, and I'm often caught parking the Prius on the grass, playing music (because it's got the system I put in it) when I fix up the cars for selling. I don't like that it has to constantly recharge the batteries by running the gas engine.

I tried using a float charger on the 12v in the back on several different settings, even going so far as to leave it on FAST CHARGE and START (as if to quickly jump start a car). It didn't seem to do anything as far as I could tell. The car would still run every so often to charge the battery.

Maybe I just need something stronger?

 

Toyota's plug in approach is having a separate HV charger.
That's the answer.

Ken@Japan

 

So, you didn't see a separate HV charger on the Gen2 plug in.
I saw it on the Gen2 plug in.
That's difference.

Ken@Japan

 

Any 2 phase remaining in the US is legacy industrial equipment from nearly a century ago. Standard residential service is split single phase in the range 110/220 to 120/240.

But through the magic of transformers, the raw voltage doesn't matter. EV / PHEV battery chargers can be built to operate from either voltage range. But I'm not aware of any current vehicles that can allow the AC mains be tied directly to the motor drive system without killing something or someone.

 

Markus,

This has been tried (pEEf has tried) and it does not work, the Prius will throw an error code, as it is not expecting the power on the HV bus.

If you have a rectifier to turn 230V AC into 230v DC you can connect this directly to the HV battery, this is how the Enginer system works (230-240V DC connection). You must sit with the car while it charges, and the car must be in Ready.

You say you are not good at electronics. if that's true, don't do anything like this, as you could either kill yourself or destroy your car.

 

I basically just asked same question a few days ago and was quickly talked out of attempting it by people who have tried. So I opted for a enginer 4kw system I would recommend instead of trying to do this and waist time and money and possible harm to you or your vehicle to just buy a phev kit.

 

If you're actually turning the car on (with the Ready light on) then you won't be able to prevent the ICE from starting to charge the HV battery. The climate control (if it's on) and other systems take power from the HV battery and when that gets low it will start the ICE to charge the HV battery. Putting a charger on the 12V battery won't stop this from happening.

However, if you put the car on in Accessory mode (hit the power button *without* your foot on the brake) the ready light will stay off and everything will run off of the 12V battery. If you run like this for too long you could drain your 12V battery and prevent the car from starting, but in this case, putting a charger on the battery with enough power to run the radio will let you run indefinitely without it running the ICE.

 

*Don't* do that! Prius' inverter creates pulsed power of variable frequency to control the motors; it never generates anything that looks like mains power. If you connect it directly to any mains supply it will immediately be destroyed.

It's fun to think about such projects but successful plug-in conversions depend on the details. All of them create DC power to charge the HV battery, and require very careful monitoring of the battery to avoid over- and under-charging. A home-brew attempt that doesn't do everything correctly will destroy the HV battery or harm the person doing the work.