Prius I: jumping the HV battery?

I did not quickly see the specs so I could not verify.
I did notice that the unit is UNTESTED. So there is a chance that even it is right, the it may not work properly.

In any case... I'll toss it back to you to work through these 3 questions.

1)Does it have input that matches your house current? (120vac or 240vac)
Please answer Yes or no

2) Does it have an output voltage of at least 300vdc? Please answer Yes or no
(Since it is an electrophorisis power supply I assume its output is dc, not ac, but please verify.)

3) Can the output current be adjusted to under 350 milliamps?
Please answer Yes or no

150 milliamps will work if you had no other options, but it will be very slow. So it depends on what you are planning to do with it. It will take more than twice as long to charge as one that can do 350 milliamps.

You will likely need to put a diode in line on the positive lead.

 

Safety first.
While a generic high voltage/medium current (0.1-1.0A) power supply may technically work, it requires active monitoring by the operator during the recharge process (which can be hours).
I'm thrifty, but I avoided the homebrew process for exactly this reason.
A hybrid-designed system (such as HybridAutomotiveLLC.com offers; there may be others) will have monitoring, plus have charging setpoints (and voltage ramping, for charging and cell levelling) already built in, so that having a cup of coffee away from the car is less of a risk/hazard that the battery pack comes to an untimely end and take the vehicle with it.

 

Exactly. The wheel has been invented. Use it.

 

Yes it IS. Vastly different.

It is pretty hard to do yourself any serious damage when working with 12 VDC.

It is pretty EASY when working with ~130 volts.

 

I find it hard trying to be helpful in this discussion without being dis-respectful.

But it seems to me that you don't have even a simple basic concept of how things work, especially electricity.

For instance,the question above:
Where are you going to get that kind of input voltage.
And the output is about 2X what the HV battery needs.

I fear that if you insist on diving in blindly when you don't understand what is involved, you will do yourself some serious damage.

 

I have the Prolong system from HybridAutomotive.com and it requires a hard wired pigtail. Not a difficult install, but it does require pulling the cover off the top of the battery pack and also removing the battery cooling fan to do some wiring. Pretty cool, tho. It runs the cooling fan to keep the battery elements cool while it's charging. And it's a properly controlled power supply specifically designed for the Gen 1 hybrid battery. Not cheap, but correct!

My thought is that the HV is an unlikely candidate for jump charging. If it fails, probably it won't take an acceptable charge (likely that battery elements will be the cause of the failure.) However, with the Prolong grid charger one could theoretically field charge a HV. One would only need a 12v dc to 120v ac inverter of sufficient wattage to run the charger, and, of course, a power supply such as a running/charging automotive charging system--like another car or truck.

I'm with Chap and Spade, tho. This is not a job to futz around with or experiment. At the worst, you could burn down the hybrid car or die.

 

I worry a bit more about death than burning down the car.

Invest in personal protective equipment.
It is worth the $100 expense.
Class 00 High voltage rubber gloves. Leather covers for the gloves.

You can do this cheaply or you can do this safely. But not both at the same time.

Cheapest way is what I did the other day... But it was very dangerous. 2 pieces of wire jumping from one Prius high voltage battery to the other. (Not recommended!)

Much more expensive, but safer way was using my $1000 high voltage charger/discharger system that is automated has graphing capabilities and real-time output to my desktop computer.

There are plenty of other options between these two methods.

Feel free to call me and discuss ideas.

Ultimately the decision is yours. Be safe!

 

An 85 to 264 volt input range is pretty easy to satisfy in large swaths of the world.

That's more of an issue.

-Chap

 

Don't forget the inline diode.
May need it in both leads.
Depends on the machine.

 

Won't need to carry much current, but should have a robust > 300 volt reverse breakdown voltage. Really, you just want to prevent the battery from 'charging' the power supply's output capacitors the instant you connect the leads.

-Chap

 

There is a good chance that there is a specific protocol to follow to test it.

Sometimes you will need a load on it to test it.

Sometimes you need to hold a button for an allotted number of seconds while the unit gets up to the voltages.
Etc, etc

Find the manual and read it.


You said you were going to try to return it unless someone says otherwise.... Well I'm saying otherwise.


As far as I'm concerned you should not return it. The listing did what it said it would, which is power up. So it does exactly what the seller described.

You said yourself that ".... It's tested to power on. It's very cheap so I think it's worth the risk. To be expected with sales of old equipment."

So, you took the risk and you lost this time.

You could have chosen to spend your money on a tested unit, but you didn't.

And on top of all that, there is a chance that the unit works properly, but you just don't know how to use it. That it user error and not a fault of the seller.

Don't try to penalize the seller.

Chalk it up to a lesson learned and move on.

 

You are ultimately able to do what whatever you want.

But to me it feels like you are wasting people's time.

I mark the $50 as the cost of learning a relatively cheap life lesson. If I buy something untested it may not work.

You win some you lose some.

Shrug your shoulders and move on.

 

Sometimes things are cheap and untested but fixable. I bought a palm nailer on eBay last week for cheap. It showed up, then I ordered the one $3 spring it was missing.

-Chap