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Prius Owner Runs Inverter for Days for Power after Hurricane

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by ski.dive, Jul 31, 2019.

  1. ski.dive

    ski.dive Active Member

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  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    cool! what a great idea!(y)
     
  3. Skibob

    Skibob Senior Member

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    This has been discussed before. I was going to call bull crap about the author running all that stuff from an 1100 watt inverter but he did mention it cut out quite a bit. One other thing, Never ever gonna drill holes or saw into my car.
     
    #3 Skibob, Jul 31, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2019
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  4. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    Drilling holes and sawing into vehicles is fun! Back in my car stereo installation and later in my van conversion days, we'd do it with brand new vehicles all the time and every once in a while somebody would screw up. Like the guy who used really long speaker screws to mount the rear speakers in a Bronco and didn't realize it until all four screws were sticking out the side of the car. That vehicle's owner got no shortage of free stuff from us after we got their car back from the body shop... Or how about the pop-top PVC plastic and fabric tents we used to mount to the top of Toyota vans that would come loose on the freeway. Or that time the boss was telling me funny jokes while I was raising a car on the lift and forgot to put hood down and it crumpled up into the roof of the shop before he got to the end of his joke? I guess the joke was on him that time? It was a good way to make sure the boss never again distracted me while I was working. :)
     
  5. Brian in Tucson

    Brian in Tucson Active Member

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    I call serious bullcrap! 1100 w won't even run a refrigerator. Or a hairdryer. Would work for charging a cell phone, but so would the outlet in the car. It would handle a bunch of LED lights, too.

    Nice idea, just not enough power. A 5000 watt inverter would work, with an array of 3 or 4 deep cycle batteries.
     
  6. Skibob

    Skibob Senior Member

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    Actually most modern refrigerators run under 500 watts excluding the start up surge. It was also having the heat and hot water that got me. In my case my hot water is gas and I could run my gas furnace blower and fridge at the same time on 1100 watts
     
  7. ski.dive

    ski.dive Active Member

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    I have a 2000w Power Inverter hooked up to my Prius 12v battery,
    +++During our last Hurricane,
    I ran a ''full size fridge''
    4 box fans
    a Laptop Computer
    and some LED lights =For 4 days ''NO ISSUES''
     
  8. George W

    George W Active Member

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    My boss would distract me while I'm into a 56 pin Cannon Plug, and sure enough I would solder a pin before putting the heat shrink in place. DAMMIT
     
  9. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    Back then my boss on Monday mornings would stand around and watch us work and meditate on his business. I was still in my early 20's so it took a while to realize I had to tell him to stop... Nothing makes someone do poor quality work faster than a boss / authority figure watching over them when they aren't actually helping, but distracting!
     
  10. George W

    George W Active Member

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    There's no such thing as a free lunch. Yes, the Gen 2 Prius got plenty of robust engineering, but there must be a reason they limit the 12V to 100 Amp fuse (I'm guessing safety). Let's hope your 'Challenger Throttle-Up' didn't stress the wiring enough to fail when you really need it next time.
     
  11. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    What brand of inverter?
    Was it pure sine wave or regular?
     
  12. Kaptainkid1

    Kaptainkid1 Active Member

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    What gen Prius?

    SM-J737T1 ?
     
  13. Kaptainkid1

    Kaptainkid1 Active Member

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    I'm guessing this would work for all Toyota Hybrid like: highlanders hybrid, Rav4 Hybrid and Camry Hybrid. I wonder if this mod can work on any Hybrids? Ford, Hyundai, honda and Nissan.

    SM-J737T1 ?
     
  14. Kaptainkid1

    Kaptainkid1 Active Member

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    Did you hook up the inverter directly to the 12volt battery? Should there be a 30 amp or higher amp fuse should be installed from the inverter to the battery?

    SM-J737T1 ?
     
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  15. George W

    George W Active Member

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    Depends on the inverter.

    1. Cheap:

    Bestek 2000W inverter - $129 Modified sine wave that uses 50 Amp internal fuses.

    2. Expensive

    Samlex 2000W 112 inverter - $729 True sine wave that recommends 250 Amp fuse.

    The first inverter clips the sine wave. , it's very hard on devices that have motors. The second inverter provides true Utility qualilty.

    Sine Waves.png

    You can find both types of inverters in between these prices, but you really need to research exactly what you can support in an Emergency. Maybe get yourself a KiloWatt meter and start recording the power use of your 'must have' gadgets during an outage. Good luck.
     
  16. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    Because of such a huge difference in price, I'm wondering if anyone has used a scope to see if a high quality ISOBAR by Trip Light type power strip improves the quality of the modified Sine Wave so it has a better chance of powering more electronics that normally only work with a pure sine wave inverter?

    Another example, in my rack of Pro Audio gear I have a piece of rack gear called a "power conditioner" that all the AC 110v gear plugs into that helps eliminate noise... Of course when I looked inside it has way less components than the ISOBAR it plugs into... So maybe it's just a sales pitch and not that great?

    And beyond these two options that I already own, is there anything else you could by that's relatively inexpensive that you can plug into the 110v AC output on a Bestek modified that would bring the electrical signal closer to pure sine wave?
     
  17. George W

    George W Active Member

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    I don't know of any. You are correct that your power conditioner already smooths out the spikes.

    Xantrex has their ProSine 2KW (TSW) for $350. However, like the Samlex, recommends a 250 Amp inline fuse.
    Giandel has a 2KW TSW inverter for less ($300) , see it's chart below for a 3AWG wire capable of 200 Amps of Current.

    Recommended wire size.png

    So here you have 3 different companies with competing products that rely on larger-than-Prius Fuses for safe operation.

    Looking at MSW products in that 2KW range, most will try to draw 100 Amps. Documentation and Customer reviews are going to be your guide
     
    #17 George W, Dec 30, 2019
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2019
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  18. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    It's also helpful to just do the "back-of-the-envelope calculation" in advance to check sanity.

    The Prius electrical system produces about 14 volts when READY. 2000 watts divided by 14 volts is about 143 amps. But the inverter is probably no better than 90% efficient, so there'll be no way it's drawing less than 159 amps from the input when running at full output. At that rate, it will be drawing the car's output down below 14 volts, meaning the current will really be even higher. The fuse will be larger (say, 250 in the Samlex case) to account for peak loads.

    Therefore the description of the Bestek above (50 amp fuses?) doesn't pass the giggle test. A little closer look at its product page shows it does indeed employ 50 amp fuses ... six of 'em. Kind of clever, they must have six inverter sections inside running in parallel and coordinating to keep the work evenly divided; if so, the six 50-amp fused sections function like a 300-amp fused input.

    (The "manual" linked on that product page is ... a single page. This is not a product with very complete documentation.)

    Either way, this is well above what a person has any business trying to draw from the Prius DC/DC converter. If I were to connect one of these, I would think seriously about tapping something into the converter's IDH output. This is a signal that the DC/DC converter raises to complain about excessive load. The Prius heater watches that signal so it can shed loads like the 700 watts of electric supplemental heat when necessary. I would think seriously about tapping IDH with some circuit to shed loads from the oversized inverter, or just turn it off, or at least blink a red light and make you decide what to do about it.

    I think in later generations, "IDH" may have changed from an actual wired signal to a remark made on the CAN bus.

    That is easily the fugliest idea of a "modified sine wave" I have seen anywhere. Was that inverter broken?
     
  19. justlee

    justlee Junior Member

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    What is the power rating for the DC to DC converter? I would guess that Toyota figured about 50 Amps would be enough to run the car's 12V loads so that is about 700 Watts. I wonder if you would be asking for trouble if you ran larger than a 500 Watt inverter at full output? I would be really surprised if you could run a 1000 Watt inverter at near full load for more than a few minutes. I'd love to hook up a 1500W inverter to my 2005 and let it carry me through a power outage but I'd be afraid of burning up the DC to DC converter. My evening power load averages just about 350 watts continuous. My refrigerator pulls 170 running watts plus the occasional starting surge so I'd think if the DC to DC converter could sustain 500 Watts this could work, especially if a 12V RV battery was added. Does anybody know what the DC to DC converter is actually rated for? We in California might need to be prepared for years of power cutoffs because the grid was allowed to deteriorate.
     
  20. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    The theory is running a 2000w inverter at 700w is more efficient and within spec of system capacity than using a smaller inverter...

    Here's my latest rig... A Bestek 2000w inverter with two Prius batteries with each 16v block wired in parallel, so a bank of 28 blocks will power the inverter till total remaining voltage goes down to 10volts. :) In winter my spare packs are good for power outages... In Summer they make great loaner packs to dead Prius friends in need. :)

    IMG_20191221_162229.jpg
     
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