Is it possible to make a standard outlet in the Prius? I know little about such things, but I'm talking about the type of outlet you'd find in a house.

 

You can hook up an inverter by plugging it into one of the 12 Volt outlets located on the dash and inside the console in the 2004. I believe these are fused at 10 amps, so you can't power anything that draws more than about 100 watts.

You can connect a larger unit directly to your 12 Volt battery. But be sure to use a fuse in the line.

Don't use any 12 Volt accessories for long if the car is not in Ready mode. The 12 Volt battery is small and will quickly run down. When the car is in Ready mode, it is recharged from the High Voltage battery.

Don't even think about hacking into the high voltage system to run an inverter. That stuff is DANGEROUS! The Prius has a lot of safety devices built in, and if you bypass them to get to the high voltage, you're just asking for trouble.

Most electrical supply stores such as Radio Shack carry inverters.

Mike RT

 

Jason

For what would you like to do this? What do you want to power?

I like MikeRT's reply - though I have a DC-plug 350-watt unit I use occasionally inside the car. WalMart, etc. prices on the units are generally a little better than RadioShack.

The Prius does present a special challange with it's tiny battery though. I used to run a radio out of a car by using a small gelcel battery about half the size of the Prius battery and a small inverter - worked great for several hours!

Jack

 

Jack,

Nothing specific. Just wondering if it would be possible. I never quite understood why there were special outlets in cars that didn't match with household outlets. Then again, I'm sure there's some scientific reason.

 

Well, probably othe nly real reason is that few people take their blenders and toasters with them on their way to work!

An inverter takes DC current and makes it AC current. Of course, it also steps the voltage up (usually) along the way - we couldn't do much appliance-wise with 12vac. B)

You DO find them as normal equipment on campers, motor homes, etc though - because it is expected you will use household applianced away from home.

They are usually not too efficent though - some can be as bad as about 35% efficient, the expensive ones may run up in the 70-80% area - though newer designs are getting much better. Efficiency here means how much power in to create power out. The higher the efficiency, the longer you can run given equipment on a given battery and teh less heat it will produce as waste.

So - there really isn't much call for putting AC power in normal cars - though it can be useful. I was looking for a car power unit for a laptop once - the blasted thing for some reason (maybe it was those big three lettters, IBM) was about $180! So - since I already had the inverter for the car, I just plugged it in like I was at home or work and it did fine. A "no cost" solution. Of course, teh inverter ran me about the same amount, but I could run lots more than my (now defunct) laptop on it!

You know what the REALLY odd thing is? Most of the stuff (like the laptop) that we WANT to use in the car runs on DC anyway! And usually at a bit less than 12v as well. It is a mindset thing that forces us to bring DC up to AC so that the thing we plug in can convert that AC back into DC again! The exception of course is anything with an AC motor in it (blender, mixer) or high power heating items like toasters, ovens, etc.

But you know, some how, I just never have had a really strong desire to use my tablesaw while out on the highway in my Prius.

Jack

 

I have a great use for AC power out of the Prius -it could potentially replace an emergency power generator.

I live in a neighborhood at the end of a fairly long road, with many big trees, so when the wind blows and the storms come up Hood Canal, we can end up without power for hours to days. My house has a transfer switch already built into the panel, so I'd just need to mount an inverter near it on the outside of the house, run jumper cables to the Prius, put it in Ready mode, and let the SULEV, quiet engine fire up whenever needed to recharge the battery and keep the heat and a few lights on.

I saw a posting about someone who had done this in a first-generation Prius. Does anyone know of a reason why it would not work in the '04? Is there somewhere I can find out what size inverter it could handle?

 

Without doubt, this WILL work - but it is really kinda wasteful and silly.

One of the first things I identified when I started studying hydrogen fuel cells though is the reversal of teh "usual consideration" about electric cars - that one could actually bring the car home and plug the HOUSE into the CAR - not the other way around as one would usually think. This is because the fuel cell is a true electric generator.

The Prius, though certainly more efficient than many gasoline engines, is still a gasoline engine running a generator - and not even one tuned to generate sufficient 120ac power. The MGs are actually generating to the main battery - with a little offshoot that handles the 12v batt. - unlike a Priustoric vehicle.

So consider:

You will be running an engine to recharge a VERY SMALL 12v battery to power an inverter to produce 120vac (at relatively low wattage) to power your house. Augmenting the small car battery with a much larger one is possible, but does not really improve on the charging efficiency - and MAY cause a problem with existing wiring.

Given that most low-cost inverters are not terribly efficient (more expensive ones are better, but without going into incredible expense, I wouldn't expect anything above 75% without careful tuning of the load to the inverter), much of your power generation is going into heat - and your efficiency of that marvelous engine is being lost.

I would imagine that to do this with the Prius effectively, you will need an additional (one or more) larger standard-size 12v car (or marine) battteries and what amounts to probably more expense than just getting a tiny generator. You will need more than a kilowatt to run most any of the main items in the house - more than that if you want to be basically in the "pre-power loss" mode (which is what I have - a 7500w gen that I don't even THINK about - I throw the transfer and the house comes up - the gen hardly burps!) Consider that a toaster alone can pull more than a killowatt

If you go to only a kilowatt or less, you will have to "pick and choose" what appliances are powered (heater/furnace, water pump, refridgerator, water heater, etc....) Most small inverters are only on the order of 300w or less, and relatively good ones are about $100-$200 at that output (RadShack has a 300W for $99.99). TrippLite has a mountable 1kw inverter that appears to retail for around $250. It specifies a 100A constant supply, quite a bit more than I would expect from a Prius 12v batt! It also specs a minimum 175Ah battery, 0ga wire for a 31-foot cable run (2ga for 20ft, 4ga for 12ft.)

Personally, I don't think this is practical, but it WOULD do one or two small things - like a light or two (two 60W bulbs is 120W! 5 such bulbs is the limit of a 300w inverter!)

As for handling the needs of a house though - unless you have some REAL minimal needs, I would get a small generator. My 7.5kw ran me $1500, a 1.5kw could be had for about $300-400, but that is REALLY minimal!

Jack

 

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful reply!

In my case, I'm really only concerned about enough electricity to run the furnace fan and keep a few lights on. I heat with propane. 1-1.5kw should be enough.

I actually had a generator at another house, and what I disliked about it is that it's yet another engine to be maintained and periodically run to keep it functional, the gas goes bad between uses, it's quite loud, etc.

Yes, the Prius is a gas engine, and there are conversion inefficiencies, but probably no more so than in a generator. My guess is that a generator engine would spew more pollution in an hour than the Prius ICE running all day.

I would love to have a hydrogen fuel cell running my car and occasionally powering my house. I babied an '85 Camry for over 300k miles waiting for someone to come up with one. Not even Toyotas last forever- hence the Prius!

 

There is a 15 amp fuse on each of the power outlets. I suggest you avoid draining more than 200W from a plug-in power inverter. I always keep one in the Prius, so I can charge various portable devices that don't have car adapters.

 

Has anyone here tried using their Prius as a camping generator? Will the car restart and recharge as needed in power on mode? With a car, the engine has to run constantly to recharge. My thought was that the Prius would just startup and recharge intermittently.

I wanted to try this at Burning Man ( a week in the desert) running maybe 2 hours a night. Any concerns about creating battery memory by running it down?