2nd Gen Prius PHEV Conversion (Enginer plug-in lithium ion battery kit)

[GeneralAnarchy]

Originally Posted by epa5epa

I order a 264W roof solar panels from PVCOOL today.

That is a lot of solar watts. Do you have enough surface area on the roof of the car?

With very careful slow driving I've been getting close to 80mpg. As the weather gets warmer I'm able to go farther in EV mode. I am planning to use a 60W solar panel to help charge the PHEV kit.

[Daox]

I am bringing this thread back from the dead because I am working on the PHEV kit again. I am very confident if I would have gone with my system versus the BMS16C (with my configuration of parts) that it would have worked out quite well and I would have been using the kit this whole time. Instead, I have been using it here and there and my pack is now shot. So, I have pulled the kit from the car once again and will be requesting some parts.

[bennelson]

See, just a few comments from me about taking the 48V of lithium to use in my motorcycle and gets Daox back on the job!


Seriously... all those parts would be nice for a 48V Lithium EV Motorcycle....

[Daox]

Haha, I've been wanting to get back to this for a while. Now, with the new job I finally have time to work on stuff and I can get back to it. The alternative vehicle show did provide an inspirational push though!

[Daox]

I got a replay from Enginer. He wanted me to try and charge a 12V set of batteries with a lead acid charger to make sure they're dead. I had to try a couple chargers before I found one that would actually charge from the whopping ~50mV that the batteries had in them. Finally, I found that my Soneil chargers I use on my electric riding lawn mower worked out. The batteries are currently on the charger. I don't have much hope for them though.

[Daox]

Quick update here. I got some of the cells to take a charge. I've load tested half of them and none of them are showing very good capacity though.

[Daox]

Out of the 32 batteries, I got ~20 to take a charge. Obviously, the capacity is a bit low on these cells, but I'm going to play around with them until I get the new ones, and make sure my BMS works. So, thats what I've been doing... Unfortunately it hasn't been done very successfully. I've been having issues getting the celllog's alarm port to work properly. One just isn't working and one is working, but not the way I would expect it to. When hooked up over one lithium cell, I get a 3.2V differential which is expected. When the transistor closes, the voltage only drops to 1.6V. Both of these voltages are high enough to keep the optical isolators closed and thus I'm not getting the correct signal to the arduino to kill the power to the dc to dc converter and charger. I tried putting a ~3k resistor across the leads on the alarm port wires, this dropped the voltage to 1.2V. Perhaps a lower ohm resistor will drop it enough.

[Daox]

Well, I decided to throw the kit back in the car while waiting for new celllogs to arrive. At least one of mine has a toasted alarm port, so I can't do a ton as is. So this means manual charging for now (watching for alarms and checking it at certain intervals).

I did use it on the way to work this morning with great success. My commute is 7 miles now and has a top speed of 45 mph. I turned the kit on and was able to use EV mode until I was out of town and the speed limit increased to 45 mph. After I got into the next town, I was able to keep it in electric only until I got to work. The commute itself was a pretty good one. I only hit one red light and I was in town and in EV mode. However, halfway to work I noticed a warm plastic smell so I turned the kit off. Once I got to work I double checked my connections and sure enough one of the bolts was loose. My mistake there and I'm glad I caught it. The lock washer was keeping tension on the joint, but not a ton. I was able to turn the screw with my fingers to tighten it up. All in all though, it was a great commute. I got 108 mpg on the way in and I'm incredibly happy to see that I'll be able to hit ~100 mpg on my daily commute. The only downside is that on the trip home I always get 10-20% worse mileage. I'm also not sure when I'll hit the low voltage alarms on the kit. I have them set pretty conservatively to short cycle the batteries to extend their life. I'm not sure how much capacity this is causing me to loose. I estimate with only half the batteries, the batteries being somewhat dead, plus setting alarms conservatively my capacity is quite limited compared to what it will be.

[mrbigh]

Originally Posted by Daox

Well, I decided to throw the kit back in the car while waiting for new celllogs to arrive. At least one of mine has a toasted alarm port, so I can't do a ton as is. So this means manual charging for now (watching for alarms and checking it at certain intervals).

I did use it on the way to work this morning with great success. My commute is 7 miles now and has a top speed of 45 mph. I turned the kit on and was able to use EV mode until I was out of town and the speed limit increased to 45 mph. After I got into the next town, I was able to keep it in electric only until I got to work. The commute itself was a pretty good one. I only hit one red light and I was in town and in EV mode. However, halfway to work I noticed a warm plastic smell so I turned the kit off. Once I got to work I double checked my connections and sure enough one of the bolts was loose. My mistake there and I'm glad I caught it. The lock washer was keeping tension on the joint, but not a ton. I was able to turn the screw with my fingers to tighten it up. All in all though, it was a great commute. I got 108 mpg on the way in and I'm incredibly happy to see that I'll be able to hit ~100 mpg on my daily commute. The only downside is that on the trip home I always get 10-20% worse mileage. I'm also not sure when I'll hit the low voltage alarms on the kit. I have them set pretty conservatively to short cycle the batteries to extend their life. I'm not sure how much capacity this is causing me to loose. I estimate with only half the batteries, the batteries being somewhat dead, plus setting alarms conservatively my capacity is quite limited compared to what it will be.

Your latest experience is promissory for the life expectancy of the kit besides the down side of half of the components failure

[MetroMPG]

Tim: I wonder if having an "almost EV" Prius given your new commute makes you want to do a pure EV conversion more or less?