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A couple of questions on the built in charger.
I understand the charger works on 120VAC even though the inverter produces split 240VAC. Does the inverter continue to function while the charger is connected, drawing from the battery while the charger keeps it topped up, or like some UPS's does it switch the load directly to the 120VAC input? If the latter is the case does it use the transformer to create the split 240VAC? That seems unlikely as it would require at least 50 amps input at 120VAC to provide the full 6000W...
I assume the charger can be set at a lower battery bank voltage than any connected solar so that the MPPT controllers can provide the primary charge if available and the charger only would activate if enough solar isn't available?
It also isn't clear to me how many watts the charger is capable of providing. I would assume it isn't the full 6000W, but can it handle the 3600W available in 30 amp circuit? If so, can that be limited so that it wouldn't trip the breaker if connected to a 15 amp circuit?
My use case is somewhat of a learning thing for me as part of it is very much overkill... what I want to do is put it in my popup during the summer and cover the roof with solar panels (as I said, 6000W is overkill in this case). While I'm at home (which is most of the time) it will be connected to my generator input (30 amp 240VAC) and a 30 amp 120VAC charging circuit from the main supply. The generator panel provides the critical loads to my house (kitchen but not counter outlets, microwave, fridge, freezer, kitchen heat pump, living room, internet and network, master bedroom, and possibly the living room heat pump but I need to measure the loads first). The intent is to use the solar panels to decrease the cost of the critical loads when I'm home.
In the winter, I intend to remove it from the trailer plug it into the generator inlet permanently, but not to run it full time. It will be kept charged by the main supply, and in the event of a power outage I'll switch the generator panel over to the inverter (manually). If the outage lasts more than a few minutes I have a Firman 3600W generator (120VAC only) that I can use to keep the batteries charged.
Finally, and I'm not sure about this part, is I want to use my Highlander Hybrid to charge it either as required while camping or during an outage, and sell the generator. I've installed a 1500W pure sine inverter under the dash, but in reality it's only 1200W max because in the Highlander there is a DC-DC converter for 12VDC loads which is rated at 100 amps output, getting it's power directly from the 288VDC batteries. I'd like to build a pure sine wave inverter rated at 30 amps (3600W) directly off the main battery bank. It will be a high frequency design to make it smaller because the loads will be constant. Need to be careful working with that battery bank as it is rated at 288VDC and can get as high as 320 fully charged. They make a good generator as the engine will start and stop as required to keep the battery bank charged, they can be used while driving, and they are very efficient including in effect braking energy will be used to charge the trailer.
I haven't settled on the size of the battery bank, as it will be a balance of weight and capacity, but I think I'm going to use 24VDC sized appropriately.
Hello. The GS inverter can charge at 240v or 120 v, but this has to be specify during ordering. In my case I have a Gen Invert that puts out only 120v 30A so I have my GS invert setup to do just 120 input on chargeing. The charging is set to what ever your setting is in the config of the charging area on the gs invert, but normally it will go by your battery bank voltage, so if you got a 48v system and you want it to charge up to 56v it can do that and then cut off the generator.
Please note, you might want to talk with Sid or Sean to make sure you got everything you need to have your generator start and stop by the gs inverter.
In my case I have to send in a remote to have wired up to the gs invert to remotely start my gen up since its wireless start and stop.
Some generators have a wire to do such things.
But, if you charge at 240v, you will get a higher charging rate then 120, in my case I can only push 125a at 120v, where as if I was able to do 240v I could do 250a to my bank at 24v battery bank.
Also please note, pulling power from your battery pack from a EV is going to void your warrenty if you do so, I know on Tesla that is a big no, no and will void your warrenty, the converter is not design to perform such task as supplying a inverter, let alone jump starting a lawn mower. I've seen folks do such a thing with a tesla Y and they kept on wondering what all the clicking sound was, and don't understand that that converter is not design to do what tehy was doing. The most that I know you can saftely pull from those converts to power 12v is only 20a, any higher and it causes problems. simply because most everything in the car is power off of a 12v battery and most items in the ev is running at less then 20a, the most power hog is the power windows and head lights. Even the Tesla computer only uses 100watts to run and thats at 12v, which is not even 10a in power.
My Hybrid is old... it's been off warranty a long time... I do most of the work on it myself.
Understand the issues with the converter, that's why I'm going to pull it off the main 288VDC battery (maybe). The DC-DC converter on a highlander is rated at 100 amps at 12VDC, so 1200W. Like I said, I do have a 1500W inverter on the start battery (there is a separate small battery under the hood that runs some stuff when it is off and engages the main safety contactor when it is started, and is charged by the DC-DC converter), but that is because I had it. It only runs small loads inside the car (mostly phone chargers, TVs, XBox, etc).
I'm not doing an auto start on the generator. Mine isn't even electric start, it's pull start. It's fine because I just use it for back up power in the winter. That's the nice thing about the Highlander, when it's on it will start and stop the engine to keep it's battery charged correctly, regardless of what loads are being drawn.
If I understand you correctly, you can set both the charge points and the charge current through the interface?
40 minutes ago, Baz said:thing about the Highlander, when it's on it will start and stop the engine to keep it's battery charged correctly, regardless of what loads are being drawn.
If I understand you correctly, you can set both the charge points and the charge current through the interface?
From what Sid said about the settings on the GS inverter, yes you can set the low and high charge VDC level and I think, and he can confirm it, you can even change the level of charge rate such as only 50A instead of 125A charge rate.
Well, if the hylander is useing a standard battery to start and stop the motor and not pulling from the main power pack then that shouldn't be a isue, I just know the 12v system is only rated for so many amps on those ev cars, and jump starting isn't ment for them to do.
Does the inverter continue to function while the charger is connected, drawing from the battery while the charger keeps it topped up, or like some UPS's does it switch the load directly to the 120VAC input?
From my understanding you can set it to either option through the inverter.
I assume the charger can be set at a lower battery bank voltage than any connected solar so that the MPPT controllers can provide the primary charge if available and the charger only would activate if enough solar isn't available?
It also isn't clear to me how many watts the charger is capable of providing. I would assume it isn't the full 6000W, but can it handle the 3600W available in 30 amp circuit? If so, can that be limited so that it wouldn't trip the breaker if connected to a 15 amp circuit?
Yes charge voltage and current can be set. I don't think there's really a hard limit on max charge current, I believe it depends more so on dc amperage and inverter temperature.
I'm sure sid will chime in with some more info
3 hours ago, Baz said:I'd like to build a pure sine wave inverter rated at 30 amps (3600W) directly off the main battery bank. It will be a high frequency design to make it smaller because the loads will be constant. Need to be careful working with that battery bank as it is rated at 288VDC and can get as high as 320 fully charged. They make a good generator as the engine will start and stop as required to keep the battery bank charged, they can be used while driving, and they are very efficient including in effect braking energy will be used to charge the trailer.
I've heard that the universal ac appliances that have the input range of 120-240 can be plugged directly into an ev battery without an inverter. Supposedly the first thing those appliances do is convert the power to dc anyways. Do some research first but might be worth looking into.
If you don't like that route look up vehicle to home/grid inverters. V2H V2G. There's not much out yet that I've seen though.
1 hour ago, The Blind Wolf said:Well, if the hylander is useing a standard battery to start and stop the motor and not pulling from the main power pack then that shouldn't be a isue, I just know the 12v system is only rated for so many amps on those ev cars, and jump starting isn't ment for them to do.
Yes, but it's a little more complex than that with the Toyota system (not sure about the others).
If the 12VDC battery has gone flat (which is what will happen if you, say, leave the lights on) it can be jumped started; it's on page 541 of the manual. It's done just like any other car. However, when you start it you aren't turning the gas engine motor over, you're connecting the main contactor which will allow the main battery pack to provide 12VDC through the DC-DC converter.
If the main battery bank is discharged, which it won't do unless there is a malfunction, then you are out of luck; it's being towed. The gas engine can't be started because there is no starter motor. The gas engine is turned over by one of the motor generators by the main battery pack through the synergy drive system.
The reason it is impossible to discharge the main battery pack when the car is off is because it is disconnected by a contactor when off; there is absolutely nothing connected to the battery when it isn't running (running has a different meaning, in that the car can be running but the gas engine isn't necessarily doing so).
Therefore, the best place to get power from one of these, which is exactly what the new Ford F-150 Hybrid is doing, is after the main contactor:
Yes, but it's a little more complex than that with the Toyota system (not sure about the others).
Sorry, submitted it by mistake, continuing:
- it is safe to work there if the car is off as it isn't connected to anything
- there is beaucoup amps available (more than 50kW at a nominal 288VDC)
However, that means you need an inverter running off of 288VDC nominal, or a DC-DC converter down to something another inverter would take. Given that 3600W at 288VDC is only 12.5 amps I'm going to see if I can make that work.
You are completely correct that it is inadvisable to draw heavily off the 12VDC. There is less power available there than a regular car (even the start battery is smaller) and even the fuse for the 100 amp converter is expensive.
I'd really like to get a F-150 Hybrid, which has 7200W at 240VAC at the tailgate, but it's not in the cards right now.
1 hour ago, Cali Carlos said:I've heard that the universal ac appliances that have the input range of 120-240 can be plugged directly into an ev battery without an inverter. Supposedly the first thing those appliances do is convert the power to dc anyways. Do some research first but might be worth looking into.
I haven't seen it done but theoretically that makes sense. A standard PC power supply first rectifies the AC to DC and then uses a high frequency (greater than 20kHz) inverter to drive a small ferrite core transformer, which is tapped and rectified to give the different supply rails. This is one of those times a high frequency inverter is the better design choice.
Unfortunately that doesn't fit into my design goals. I'm looking at a drop in replacement connected to my current generator panel to provide backup power in the winter and solar supplement in the summer. I'm not even thinking about going fully off grid at this house.
Hmm, you said that is the highlander? Not the Rad 4? cause the Rad 4 that was fully EV with no motor was a Tesla under the hood drive train. Not sure what they are useing under the highlanders, I know the motor is connected to the tranny and the eletric motor is as well on a Prime, kind of forgot about it, I was thinking the old, old hybrid that still used a normal starter, so yes you would have one heck of a time trying to charge a dead battery even at 12 v 😛
if I remeber from my small research that battery pack is split in the middle, I think its a 144vdc. but, I could be wrong. I watched a guy forogt his name that does a you tube vid of taking ev apart and he is in a wheel chair, he is a cool guy.
Hmm, you said that is the highlander? Not the Rad 4? cause the Rad 4 that was fully EV with no motor was a Tesla under the hood drive train. Not sure what they are useing under the highlanders, I know the motor is connected to the tranny and the eletric motor is as well on a Prime, kind of forgot about it, I was thinking the old, old hybrid that still used a normal starter, so yes you would have one heck of a time trying to charge a dead battery even at 12 v 😛
The RAV 4 EV was built by Tesla and Toyota between 2012-14; ie no longer in production. The new Rav 4 Hybrid went on sale in the US in March 2019 and uses a similar hybrid synergy drive as the Highlander and Prius. The Rav 4 PHEV uses a new drive is only currently available in Japan since June 2020.
The highlander (and RX400) pack is one of the biggest hybrid battery packs historically (but I'd bet the F-150 is larger). It is 240 cells providing 288VDC under the back seat. There's a good explanation of how it works and pictures here. I have monitoring apps in my Android in the dash so I can lack at the state of all the modules (temperature, voltage, charge state, health, etc) The guy you mention is a professor named John Kelly at Weber State University, whose You Tube channel is here. He is probably the best available source of information on how hybrids work.
Yep, thats the guy, he rocks!!!. I can sit for hours watching him, and I learn a bit about batts in ev.
I want a EV so bad, but being disabled and unable to drive one and they cost so dang much lol.
I thought about finding a Leaf for the heck of it, just for local drive,.
Though I do have a Cyber Truck on order 😛
You'd think there'd be more inverters for EVs out there but what few I've seen are very vehicle specific. I would assume there'd be a huge market for a universal EV inverter. Most EVs have enough battery capacity to run an entire house for at least a couple days and if you figure in solar or in your case a hybrid you'd be able to go much longer and maybe even indefinitely. I think there'd be a market for backup power and for people trying to lower their electricity bill through a TOU grid tie setup and pumping electricity back into the grid during peak hours. Maybe <a contenteditable="false" data-ipshover="" data-ipshover-target="/profile/2-sid-genetry-solar/?do=hovercard" data-mentionid="2" href="/profile/2-sid-genetry-solar/" rel="">@Sid Genetry Solar can invent one once he has less on his plate 😄
You'd think there'd be more inverters for EVs out there but what few I've seen are very vehicle specific...
I think, if the early reactions to the one on the F-150 Hybrid being any indication, that inverters will be available soon on all the larger (ie truck and SUV) hybrids. 7200W of 240VAC is useful in many areas, not the least of which is contractors, RVers, and home power backup.