Official Toyota Prius PHEV thread

[greenleaf]

The PHV takes about 2.5hr @L1 to charge, which is about 3.6 kWh. Assuming you charge 6 days a week, you will consume 1123 kWh a year. The 15% waste is about 168 kWh. If you have off-peak rates at 10 cents, you will save $16.80 a year.

It will take more than a decade to breakeven with the cost of upgrading. If I wait for a few years, I am sure the cost of the EVSE will come down to a more reasonable number, similar to the cost of the upgrade.

you know that every kw used that could be saved means another power plant that has to be built? granted 168 KW is not going to do it, but if a thousand people did what you did.

add another 1000 who chose not to use CFL's etc. i think what we fail to realize is that the #1 reason we are in our predicament is because we are very wasteful.

someone wrote that we would still have a life of entitlement if only restricted to what the country wastes on a daily basis.

we waste it on gas, energy, heating enormous houses with an occupant count of 2, etc.

I have solar on my roof thank you. There are many ways to spend your money to reduce your carbon footprint but upgrading the EVSE at the current price is not for me.

There are other energy efficiency improvements that can have a payback much shorter than 10 years, and those are the ones to proceed first...

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

The PHV takes about 2.5hr @L1 to charge, which is about 3.6 kWh. Assuming you charge 6 days a week, you will consume 1123 kWh a year. The 15% waste is about 168 kWh. If you have off-peak rates at 10 cents, you will save $16.80 a year.

It will take more than a decade to breakeven with the cost of upgrading. If I wait for a few years, I am sure the cost of the EVSE will come down to a more reasonable number, similar to the cost of the upgrade.

you know that every kw used that could be saved means another power plant that has to be built? granted 168 KW is not going to do it, but if a thousand people did what you did.

add another 1000 who chose not to use CFL's etc. i think what we fail to realize is that the #1 reason we are in our predicament is because we are very wasteful.

someone wrote that we would still have a life of entitlement if only restricted to what the country wastes on a daily basis.

we waste it on gas, energy, heating enormous houses with an occupant count of 2, etc.

I have solar on my roof thank you. There are many ways to spend your money to reduce your carbon footprint but upgrading the EVSE at the current price is not for me.

There are other energy efficiency improvements that can have a payback much shorter than 10 years, and those are the ones to proceed first...

oops. ok, you got me on that one.

 

[edatoakrun]

The PHV takes about 2.5hr @L1 to charge, which is about 3.6 kWh. Assuming you charge 6 days a week, you will consume 1123 kWh a year. The 15% waste is about 168 kWh. If you have off-peak rates at 10 cents, you will save $16.80 a year.

It will take more than a decade to breakeven with the cost of upgrading. If I wait for a few years, I am sure the cost of the EVSE will come down to a more reasonable number, similar to the cost of the upgrade.

It's more than money you will be saving, it's also time (and you can't buy that for any price) you will be able to fully charge in about 1 hour, 15 minutes [or less] (if it takes 2 1/2 hours now), which will let you possibly get more EV miles out of your daily driving, depending on how often you "opportunity" charge, if you use this with a "Quick 220", you can use two out of phase standard 120V outlets at a friends house, or possibly even at your job (or just install an L6-20R outlet, if possible)

Sorry, but I believe that, if you calculate the value of your time to set up to "opportunity charge", even at minimum wage, and add the true economic cost of the energy you charge with in daytime charging, I think it's pretty hard to make an economic argument for "opportunity charging" a BEV, or even to buy a PHEV, to avail yourself of that "opportunity", in the first place.

Why is the "overhead" of L1 (apparently) so high, causing such inefficiency with a PIP L1 charge?

I thought the main reason for the LEAF L1 reduced efficiency, was the high draw of the cooling system, which, I would think, might not be required, in a low battery-capacity vehicle, like the PIP.

I always guessed, that the charging efficiency of the LEAF on L1 (and maybe also on L2-do you need the cooling system pumping, when the ambient temperature is below freezing?) could be increased, if the cooling system were thermostatically controlled, rather than running for the entire duration of the charge.

 

[hill]

Upgrading to Level II is not only faster but it saves energy! There is a fixed overhead of almost 200w while charging, which on Level I is over a 15% waste! When you charge at Level II, a much larger percentage actually makes it into the battery.

FYI: I've posted in a few threads in PC.

-Phil

Supposedly, the 2013 Leaf will finally be redisigned to where it can charge at 6kw. I'm certain the PiP will never see a 6kW charge version - but if we buy the newer Leaf, is there any chance that our existing modded portable chargers will be able to handle that as a rev III upgrade? Or is its wiring too small.

.

 

[DaveEV]

Supposedly, the 2013 Leaf will finally be redisigned to where it can charge at 6kw. I'm certain the PiP will never see a 6kW charge version - but if we buy the newer Leaf, is there any chance that our existing modded portable chargers will be able to handle that as a rev III upgrade? Or is its wiring too small.

OT, but the Nissan portable charge cord can't handle any more than 16A safely. At 16A I notice that the wires get very slightly warm to to touch compared to 12A where I haven't notice any heat buildup.

 

[Ingineer]

Supposedly, the 2013 Leaf will finally be redisigned to where it can charge at 6kw. I'm certain the PiP will never see a 6kW charge version - but if we buy the newer Leaf, is there any chance that our existing modded portable chargers will be able to handle that as a rev III upgrade? Or is its wiring too small.

Yes, even though all the components are rated at 20A in the Nissan/Panasonic unit, and I've tested them to over that, I'm not comfortable releasing a product like that.

All the Lear manufactured portable units (GM Voltec, Legrand, BMW Active-E, Fisker Karma, etc) are running 12a continuous through 16AWG cable, which to me is way more dangerous than running 20A through 12AWG, but I don't wanna be like them! =)

-Phil

 

[Ingineer]

OT, but the Nissan portable charge cord can't handle any more than 16A safely. At 16A I notice that the wires get very slightly warm to to touch compared to 12A where I haven't notice any heat buildup.

A little heat is ok, a lot of heat; not so much. There is substantially more heat dissapated in the Leaf's systems (wiring, connectors, charger unit, and battery pack) than the EVSE in total. Still, I agree with you, which is why I did not upgrade the unit beyond 16A.

Hopefully by 2013, we'll have some more lower cost options too!

-Phil

 

[astrorob]

plugged my new PIP into my blink L2 EVSE tonight and noticed that the prius says that it's charging at 1.9KW. of course by the time i bothered to look, the battery was about 1/2 full, so i don't know if it started lowering the current due to battery temperature or something like that. at any rate i was sort of surprised to see such a 'low' number. i had plugged into a coulomb chargepoint earlier in the day but possibly due to firmware bugs it was not reporting the output power and in fact when charging was finished, the chargepoint network reported that 0KWH had been delivered to the battery, even though i definitely received a charge. so i don't have a baseline to compare the blink to...

 

[coolfilmaker]

plugged my new PIP into my blink L2 EVSE tonight and noticed that the prius says that it's charging at 1.9KW. of course by the time i bothered to look, the battery was about 1/2 full, so i don't know if it started lowering the current due to battery temperature or something like that. at any rate i was sort of surprised to see such a 'low' number. i had plugged into a coulomb chargepoint earlier in the day but possibly due to firmware bugs it was not reporting the output power and in fact when charging was finished, the chargepoint network reported that 0KWH had been delivered to the battery, even though i definitely received a charge. so i don't have a baseline to compare the blink to...

It has a tiny battery. I'd be surprised if it was taking any more juice than that.

 

[DaveEV]

It has a tiny battery. I'd be surprised if it was taking any more juice than that.

People on PriusChat have been saying it takes about 3.1-3.2 kWh to charge the PiP from empty to full when charging on L1.

When it charges on the PiP itself says it's charging at 1.0kW. So it's nice to know that it reports charging twice as fast on L2 - I've been trying to track down the actual L2 charge rate as I haven't been able to track down a current value - I'd have to guess that the PiP only pulls 10A on either L1 or L2??? Either that or it has a very inefficient on-car charger and is very efficient at using those electrons to power the car!

 

[greenleaf]

It has a tiny battery. I'd be surprised if it was taking any more juice than that.

People on PriusChat have been saying it takes about 3.1-3.2 kWh to charge the PiP from empty to full when charging on L1.

When it charges on the PiP itself says it's charging at 1.0kW. So it's nice to know that it reports charging twice as fast on L2 - I've been trying to track down the actual L2 charge rate as I haven't been able to track down a current value - I'd have to guess that the PiP only pulls 10A on either L1 or L2??? Either that or it has a very inefficient on-car charger and is very efficient at using those electrons to power the car!

It pulls 12A at L1. I checked it with the Kill-A-Watt.
After almost three weeks, I still have not tried to use the Blink L2 charger on the PiP.

 

[astrorob]

It has a tiny battery. I'd be surprised if it was taking any more juice than that.

People on PriusChat have been saying it takes about 3.1-3.2 kWh to charge the PiP from empty to full when charging on L1.

When it charges on the PiP itself says it's charging at 1.0kW. So it's nice to know that it reports charging twice as fast on L2 - I've been trying to track down the actual L2 charge rate as I haven't been able to track down a current value - I'd have to guess that the PiP only pulls 10A on either L1 or L2??? Either that or it has a very inefficient on-car charger and is very efficient at using those electrons to power the car!

i guess why i was confused is that the battery pack capacity is reported around the web as 4.4KWh. i know that on the non-plug-in prius, toyota only uses the middle 60% of the SOC in order to increase battery longevity. i thought the SOC margins would be smaller for the PIP since they switched battery technologies. nissan seems to be using more of the pack's total capacity but that's out of necessity, i'd imagine. toyota is very conservative with battery management. not a bad thing but with such a small pack it would have been nice to eke out a little bit more range if possible.

 

[astrorob]

After almost three weeks, I still have not tried to use the Blink L2 charger on the PiP.

actually it would be useful for me if you could try the Blink L2. it's not clear to me that my car is charging at it's top rate. so far i've only seen 1.4-1.9KW when charging at L2.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

How are you measuring your power draw?

 

[astrorob]

How are you measuring your power draw?

the car reports the charging power on the VFD. hard to say where it is measuring it, but it's probably at the battery.

with my scangauge i was able to make an X-gauge for the battery current, but for some reason the gen3 code for battery pack voltage is different on the PIP, so i can't see that. it would be interesting to see if the reported power = Vpack * Ipack.

i cant remember the nominal voltage of the prius pack, but during L1 charge the scangauge says -4A. if it's 250V then that's about 1KW which is what the VFD reports during L1 charge.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Measured at the battery means losses are not included so input power will be somewhat higher

 

[astrorob]

Measured at the battery means losses are not included so input power will be somewhat higher

yes, yes... basically as a leaf owner i got used to the idea that L2 equals something along the lines of 3.3KW charging power, but of course that's a function of the onboard charger. without thinking about too much, it i expected similar on the prius. in fact i thought it would be on the order of 3.3KW since they advertise a full charge in 1.5H at L2 and the battery capcacity is 4.4KWH. however, i forgot that toyota never discharges below 20% and never above 85%, so in fact the usable capacity is something like 2.6KWH. charged at ~2KW this takes about... 1.5 hours.

so nothing is out of whack, except that Phil was expecting the charge rate to be higher as well so i started to worry.

 

[cwerdna]

For those who might be interested, the Prius Product Manager posted some training videos intended for dealers up at http://priuschat.com/forums/toyota-prius-plug-in/106108-dealer-training-videos-up.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

 

[DaveEV]

For those who might be interested, the Prius Product Manager posted some training videos intended for dealers up at http://priuschat.com/forums/toyota-prius-plug-in/106108-dealer-training-videos-up.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

I notice they're quick the LEAF for limited range and Volt for lack of an EV-mode button in the videos...

With only 11 miles of EV range in the PiP - it barely qualifies as an EV unless you mainly drive short trips at less than freeway speeds...

 

[astrorob]

For those who might be interested, the Prius Product Manager posted some training videos intended for dealers up at http://priuschat.com/forums/toyota-prius-plug-in/106108-dealer-training-videos-up.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

I notice they're quick the LEAF for limited range and Volt for lack of an EV-mode button in the videos...

With only 11 miles of EV range in the PiP - it barely qualifies as an EV unless you mainly drive short trips at less than freeway speeds...

it will actually run at freeway speeds (almost) in EV mode, but of course not that far, and if you try to accelerate too fast it will go back into HV mode.

still for around town it's great and i can regularly do all my errands exclusively in EV mode.