48 vdc to 12 vdc step down converter

The battery is made up of 7.2 volt (nominal) modules, so you could, in theory, tap across six or seven of them, and have a nominal 43.2 or 50.4 volts, maybe up to 60 volts or so at higher states of charge. You'd have to check whether the input specs of your converter could cover such a range.

But it would be a pretty terrible idea. The car itself is only able to charge or discharge the battery using a series current through all of the modules, so any tap you added to drain only some of them would lead to battery imbalance that the car could do nothing about.

There is a large DC to DC step-down converter built into the car, which will produce 12 volts for you whenever the READY light is on.

 

Exactly.



Now, 5 of those amazon converters in series, with the outputs paralleled? Hmmm...

No, I won't be trying it myself.

 

You can buy Gen 2 inverter assemblies for a song. Buy one, take just the DC/DC converter out (it's in the bottom), wire it up to run your accessories when the car isn't READY and the one up front's turned off?

It's designed to be water-cooled. But then, it's designed to source 1400 watts (it's running the whole 12 volt system of the car while in READY, not just charging a battery). If you're only planning to run, say, 100 watts of accessories from it, you might get by with adding an ordinary heat sink, and not fussing with a water supply.

No, I won't be trying it myself.

 

That's what it's there for. It's a 201.6 volt to 12 volt DC/DC converter.

 

But then, what would 5 of the amazon converters run you?

Plus, you'd end up with all the rest of a Gen 2 inverter for your miscellaneous parts drawer.

 

WIth 14 big honkin' IGBTs and the like, you could be well on the way to building your time machine, or whatever.

Just need to find a flux capacitor.

 

I would strongly recommend against grabbing 48v of your nimh string to do this, unless you like bricking your car.

 

Just wondering. How many kWh of energy do you need? How frequently? Wouldn’t a portable lithium battery pack be a better option and recharge it as needed, even off the Prius?