Replaced Traction Battery - 2010 Prius

I replaced the traction battery in my 2010 w 140K today.
The original battery had been going downhill for ~6 months.
Classic symptoms - battery going from full-to-empty or empty-to-full rapidly & occasionally setting a trbl code which would cause the engine to run 100% of the time.
I have been monitoring the batt modules for ~9 months (via Torque) & I could see one bank was drifting wildly at very low or very high SOC.
I installed a 2012 battery that I reconditioned myself. It performs excellent - all 14 voltages stay within 100mV.

I've got the old battery on the bench now & starting to cycle it.

It'll probably take a week or two to find out what condition it is in.

It is so much fun monitoring the battery as it charges or discharges

 

~$1300 plus maybe another $100 for a few OBDII dongles/cables/Techstream(China knockoff)

 

Fan had a light but somewhat stubborn layer of dust on the blades that I removed - not a hair anyplace, & really just a light layer of dust buildup.

 

I got the battery for 1K from a fellow PCer. It had been sitting unused for ~1 year. I spent ~300 on various electronic parts in making a charger & discharger for the battery. That allowed me to cycle the pack & bring it back to very-good condition.

 

I put maybe 30 miles on it today. I had forgotten how little the battery gauge should change. I was monitoring via Torque & watching the dash gauge - the dash bars just moved 1 bar up/down & slowly. Previously, as the battery got worse, using the regen. braking would cause the gauge to jump to fully charged (8 bars?) at times - & that would often set a code that I had to clear to get back to "normal" operation.

 

No - there was probably a slight drop due to the battery not being able to do much work. I was still getting 55mpg when I swapped it out.

 

During normal driving, the engine runs most of the time.
The battery is _very_ good at recycling waste energy such as regeneration, instead of burning the energy off in heat. Sitting at a stop light, the battery can provide power to run the vehicle+AC & saves the engine having to idle.
But driving down the road at 50 mph, the engine is supplying 100% of the necessary power 100% of the time.
Any energy the battery expends to move the vehicle had best come from regeneration, otherwise the ICE should provide power directly to the tires.
So the engine isn't running much more than "normal".

For the record here are my last 5 tanks, in order from oldest to current fill-up this AM:
55.7, 56.7, 60.6, 57.6, & 54.2 mpg - this is calculated - the 60.6 I was actually working on a 700mile tank when I got trapped in a detour & had to drive on a smaller road at 35-40mph. It didn't take long until my battery set a code & my engine started to run 100% of the time. I aborted my 700mi tank & proceeded directly to a fuel station. I had 672.6 mi & the fill-up took 11.094 gal - I actually had plenty of fuel to make the 700mi tank but I wasn't taking any chances.
When driving this time of the year I should be pushing 60 mpg on every tank. Note no AC use to get this mileage.
Florida is flat. So. FL is _very flat! A 100' bridge over the ICW (Intercoastal Waterway) to give the boaters 66' of clearance is the tallest hill we have around here.

 

Purchased vehicle used in Nov, 2013 with 100K on clock. It had been purchased new from the same dealer & all service was done at the same dealer. So, for the first 4 years of its life it averaged 25K/year, indicating a fair amount of highway miles. I was counting on that to be easy on the battery also & I still think that hwy. miles are easy on the battery. It could have been used for deliveries I guess. When I swapped out the traction battery I found a few Lego toys & some ladies hair-clips/bobby pins.
My use has been 100% personal. Mostly running around So. Fla with a few trips around the state & even fewer into GA. Probably >85% on surface streets. My lowest MPG was a single trip from Jacksonville FL to Douglasville GA where (on paper) I got 39.9mpg - this was on a Friday & I had to go through downtown Atlanta - The whole trip in GA was at 80-85 & I was being passed on both sides.