Toyota Prius co-gen??

[stirich]

what a breath of fresh air to find this forum! so after going down and taking a tour of the Marathon factory http://www.marathonengine.com/ and going into to a coma after they gave me the price.....i found this forum (after i woke up).
so my qust is has any one converted the guts of a Prius in to something useful like a co-gen unit? it looks like you can buy a good wrecked one for 5-7K strip out the required parts and maybe sell the rest to re-cop some $$ and you would have a good base to start from. and there seams to be LP kits out there for these also.
i would like to heat the house and shop and feed the grid to reduce my power bill which can be as high as 3K a yr. , power here cost over .20 a KWH.
i have a water to air system in the house now and in-floor heat in the shop so the system is ready to go. i would run this in the winter only and understand it will have to start and stop a lot but hey that's  what it was built to do. and i also have access to a master Toyota mechanic through a friend so i would hope to enlist him for all of the "Prius work"
so i would hope to here from anyone that has plowed this ground before, don't need to reinvent the wheel

thanks rich

my background, was in the heating biz (but no A/C ) for 28 yrs. did mostly wood, gas, waste oil, and LP, that was 10 yrs ago, now manufacturing raceramps.com 

[Honda lee]

I have not known of any one doing this but sounds very interesting . Keep us posted.

[Tom Reed]

The engine in the Prious is quite a bit bigger than most homes would need for a co-gen system. One of the interesting things about the Prious is that you can pull about 1kw of power out of the 12v battery and the car will start and run to recharge the battery without operator intervention. This makes it kind of handy during an outage because it's already out in the driveway with a tank of gas in it. All one needs is an inverter in the 2kw range and some descent cables to connect it to the battery. I've read that with some mods 3kw is achievable.

[quinnf]

Shortly after the Prius came out some folks just couldn't leave it alone.  If you google prius generator you'll find a number of articles explaining how some people have used the electrical system as emergency backup power.  Here's one that I saw some time ago:

http://priusgen.sandbox.org/

I drive a 2008 Prius; great car.  It's been utterly trouble-free and 46 mpg on California gas.  I think I'll probably replace it with another one when the time comes. 

[LowGear]

http://priusgen.sandbox.org/

I'm flirty with picking up a rear damaged Prius (above the battery(ies)) and converting it to a town pick-up.  And now here's another adaption.  A little complicated for me but none the less an opportunity to dream.  Neat thread.

Casey

[LowGear]

I forgot to ask.

What is the output (KW and voltage and does it use AC as well as DC)of the generator that makes this car go? 

Is it separate from the electric motor? 

What is the voltage of the battery pack?

OK, I forgot to ask a bunch of questions?

Casey

[quinnf]

Casey,

I'm no expert on the car.  I just drive one and am glad I traded in my gas-thirsty Xterra for it.  One Sunday afternoon I stopped in the local 'Yota dealership just because I'd been seeing so many of the Priuses on the road.  Taxis in Seattle seem all to be Priuses now; any car that stands up to use in taxi service has got to be reliable.  I wanted to sit in one and see what they were all about.  Friend bought one for his daughter and said she was happy with it.  So I sat in it, test drove it and found it had plenty of power and was roomy for my 6'1" 250lb frame.  So I sat down and did some figuring.  I figured my Xterra, at 20 mpg, would cost $20,000 in gas over the next 100,000 miles at $4/gallon.  If I traded it in on a new Prius at 50 mpg, I'd consume $8000 in gas over the next 100,000 miles at $4/gallon.  Difference was 20,000 - 8,000 or $12,000 saved.  Trading in the (paid for) Xterra for $4500 meant the Prius cost me about $8000.  Since I commute to work, for my purposes it made oodles of sense.  I drove a white Prius home that day. 

To answer your questions, the traction battery is 200 volts, but only 6.5 AH.  It's not an electric car, it uses the batter sort of like a big motor starting capacitor.  Most cars only need their big engines while accelerating; at crusing speed, they don't need much power.  The battery gives the Prius' smallish gas engine a boost through its 20HP electric motor while accelerating, and uses the battery to store 'lectric energy generated while braking.  So the car gets the same mileage in town as it does on the highway.  And its brakes last a LONG time.  The newer plug-in version of the Prius has a bigger battery, like the Chevy Volt, and will go some distance on electric power alone.  But an article I read which analyzed the economic tradeoffs Toyota made when deciding big battery vs. small battery indicated Toyota and Honda got it right by putting in a small battery; the larger battery doesn't pencil out economically.  Look at the cost of a Volt vs a standard Prius.  

The 'lectric motor and engine feed into the Toyota "Synergy Drive" which is a rather cool torque coupler that allows the car to run either only on battery, as when sneaking through a parking lot, looking to surprise Yuppies yakking on their cell phones, or on gas power alone, as you do on the flat when up to freeway speed, or by both electric and gas power, as you get anytime you floor the accelerator, or while climbing hills, passing slower cars, etc.  Transition from gas to electric and back is seamless and you almost don't feel it.  The car will cruise at 90 all day, too, and is very quiet, thanks to the smallish Atkinson-cycle 24 valve engine with variable valve timing (trick!).  

For the purposes of running as a backup generator, you're going to have to do something about being limited to 200 volts.  Folks have done it, but it's not trivial.

Quinn
 

[LowGear]

I ride in those very taxis from SeaTac to Renton when visiting and I too am impressed with any wide spread taxi selection.  We spent a day with friends in their Prius this summer and really liked the car.  But I need a pick-up for apartment maintenance and repairs.  Oh, and I've always wanted to convert something into a pick-up.  These have suspension beef-up kits for those that want to convert to more electric.  Temptation is a wonderful thing.

I'm always on the look-out for a factory generation system that poops out about 300 DC to plug into my SMA inverter.  200 just isn't enough but I'm very intrigued by the pick-up concept.

Thanks for the overview.

Casey

[glort]

I learn something everyday on these forums.
I would have never thought the Battery was so small capacity wise ! They also rate them in KW which I had never seen before but found how they work that out.  Dunno what's wrong with just sticking to AH that everyone understands!

The prius is Popular as a Taxi in New Zealand as well. Got a shock when I saw them there. Generally here they use full size vehicles though I have seen a few Camrys getting around of late.

Some time ago I saw an article where people were converting their cars so they could be charged from the mains and installed extra batteries for longer range. Some of the keener hippys actually removed the engine and just ran on electric power. Someone must have forgot to tell them that the majority of power is still generated from fossil fuels in the form of coal. Maybe they were thinking they would charge their cars up from their solar panels when they got home at Night! 

It seems toymota have an option for the plug in charging now and there are also companies offering conversion kits with around 10 Times the original battery capacity.
The cost makes me dubious as to the real savings though or how long the ROI would be.
They talk about fuel saving but not the cost of power and for the cost of the kits you could buy another car or a LOT of fuel.

I'm highly suspicious of these Hybrids and it's clear they aren't all they are cracked up to be by a long shot.  The marketing people and green goobers crap on about reduced emissions and clean, enviro friendly and all the rest of the predictable but the thing are a nightmare as far as production and disposal of battery packs and components go.  They use huge amounts of resources in production and disposal of components is basically done in landfill with questions hanging over what will happen to the material and what will it contaminate in future.
Still, lots of people especially the green Goobers will champion anything as long as you tell them it's enviro friendly and green and all that feel good stuff and never look beyond what they want to hear.

One thing that Toymota don't talk about is cost of ownership. Studies show it is actually one of the most EXPENSIVE small cars to own when costs of Purchase price,  servicing, maintenance, tyres, insurance, resale etc are taken into account. So much for the fuel savings. That's only a part of the whole deal.
Still, You can wangle numbers to say whatever is in your interest for them to say.


I have been running Veg oil for 8 years this month and the savings I have made in fuel are huge. I would guess I spend about $100 a year on petrol fuel mainly in winter to blend with.  I also think there are a lot better alternatives to the hybrids in the form of euro Diesels which get just as good a mileage as a tightarse but don't have all the highly toxic and energy intensive battery and manufacturing and are a lot more recyclable as well. I also run a nice solid and generous size truck with heaps of power for when I'm towing things and loading it up for trips up and down the coast and taking things around for my business.

I had a look on flea bay at the price of tightarse spares and saw a LOT of 1500cc engines for sale. What I didn't see was any electric motors. Are they in the transmissions?  The tranny  seemed to be about 3 times the price of the petrol engine in those things.  I don't know why they didn't do the engine in diesel on those things. They would have been a lot more economical still going on standard diesel cars consumption.

My wifes last car was a Peugeot Turbo diesel. I turned the turbo and fuel up on the thing and it would break traction from a fast rolling start in gear without touching the clutch. On a couple of trips away with the thing fully loaded with 4 adults and a ton of gear, the thing got 43MPG and never dropped below the legal road speed along the freeway through the hills just out of the city.  The car was 11 YO at the time and that was on Straight Veg oil which has about 10% less power than Dino.
A mates son had the same car and used to go away a lot as well with just himself and a bag and consistently got the published 51 MPG for his. Admittedly his was in better nick than my wifes and the load was a lot less but he did do it.

I remember him leaving on a 2000Km+ trip and filling the tank with home brew Bio and taking 4 Drums with him. I asked why he didn't take more fuel and he said that was how much he took last time and brought one drum home and had an 1/8th of a tank still left.
I think the old VW Diesel golfs got 50 MPG+ and that was an 80's car.

Even my Japanese 4.2L, 2.5 ton 4WD tank with the aerodynamics of a block of flats gets over 30 MPG with a little care and not too much of a load and that's on veg oil.

Modern Diesel cars from Hyundai, Citroen, Peugeot, Holden/ Vauxhall, Fiat, Kia, Skoda, Seat, Volkswagen, Mini, ford, Volvo and Renault among others all get the same or  better mileage than the prius and they are just conventional vehicles and cost less as well. There are plenty of Petrol vehicles that get very close to the tightarse and cost a heap less and have a lower overall cost of ownership.

When it's possible to get consumption like that  out of a conventional Diesel, The Hybrids leave me underwhelmed.

Not trying to put down your personal choice down in anyway Quinn, just looking at a bigger picture and hang ups I have with these Hybrid Vehicles which I believe are far from all they are cracked up to be and not remotely as green as they are made out.
Thankfully you didn't mention that side of things so can't be offended at my comments on that!   

[Ronmar]

Why rate in Watts instead of AH?  I think that is a UPS thing.  AH is a long established method of rating battery capacity.  The problem is that AH is typically expressed in terms of a load spanning a 10 or 20 hour discharge rate.  When talking UPS usage, that rating dosn't mean much when you discharge current is perhaps several hundred times that 10 or 20 hour discharge rate. 

By expressing it in watts they can do so at the actual rate the battries are being discharged at without confusing the established AH ratings.  For an example a small gell cell commonly used in UPS's is about 6" long, 4" high and 2.5" wide and rated at around 7.5AH/20HR.  That is a .375A discharge rate.  That same battery is rated at 36W/Cell/15 minutes(216W/15 min on a 12V battery).  That = 3A per cell or 18A load on the same battery in UPS service for 15 minutes.  Also watts being watts regardless of the source, makes it easier to calculate final UPS capacity with battery watts X inverter efficiency = to UPS output over that battery's time rating(15 minutes).  Got twice that load on the UPS, well it will only run 7.5 minutes instead of 15 on good batteries.  4X load, well you only get 3.75 minutes runtime then:)   

[quinnf]

Glort,

Don't know where you're getting your information on the cost of ownership, but here's a recent published cost breakdown:

http://www.motortrend.com/cars/2013/toyota/prius/cost_of_ownership/ 

The low cost of ownership is precisely why I bought the car, and I suspect it's why the cars are so popular as taxis.  I'm at 70,000 miles now; according to my earlier calculation, I've saved $8400 in fuel costs over what I would have paid, had I continued to drive my Xterra.  Am on my second set of tires, original brakes, and have had zero problems with the car, other than hitting a suicidal deer, but that was the deer's fault.  Just drive it every day and put 8 gallons of gas in it every 400 miles or so, and try not to look too smug when I pull into the station, then leave, while the guy filling his monster pickup it still filling his tank. 

Re: the hybrid concept, the Prius has been in production for 18 years, and has been sold in the U.S. since 2000.  And it seems all the other manufacturers are now offering hybrids; I've even seen Mercedes and BMW hybrids recently, and even drove next to a UPS delivery truck that said "Hybrid" on the side. 

q.

[LowGear]

Hmmmmmm,

I'm at 70,000 miles now; according to my earlier calculation, I've saved $8400 in fuel costs

70,000 / 50 MPG = 1400 gallons * $4 = $5600? gross fuel costs.  At $5 a gallon = $7,000.  At $6 a gallon = $8,400. 
70,000 / 25 MPG = 2800 gallons * $4 = $11,200? gross fuel costs.  At $5 a gallon = $14,000.  At $6 a gallon = $16,800. 
I get it.  I'm going through the same math with a 70 inch LED TV.  At a dollar a day savings over the 10 YO Sony (brand doesn't really matter) I'll break even in five years and enjoy the TV/computer monitor of my dreams.  OK, the math was for a 60 incher and the used LCD I picked up as a stop gap blows all the math to Hadies but I really want a 70.  My wife is leaving town this week, wouldn't that be a fantastic surprise for her when she returns and settles in for the last few weeks of football?  Sweetie, I was only thinking of you and Mr. Manning.

How many miles do the batteries get and what is their replacement cost?

Is lithium cleaner or dirtier than coal?

Also:

I think Toyota realized that those hippies had a good idea with the enhanced battery capacity and went with it.  One of the few animals that are more dangerous than hippies are engineers.  They know they're right as they have a degree.

At $5 an hour for your time how much are you paying for your fuel.  I do the WVO and biodiesel routine too but it has little to do with economics*.  The planet is leasehold!  Hence there is no ROI on anything except what you take with you.

Casey

*  I'm at war with the oil cartels and fighting them in a most gentlemanly manor.  Oil man to oil man.  Disillusions are a beautiful thing.

[quinnf]

The 70,000 mile calculation compared how much it would cost to drive the Xterra at 20 mpg vs the Prius at 50 mpg with gas at $4/gallon for that distance.  It would cost $14000 in fuel to drive the Xterra that far; $5600 for the Prius.  The difference being $8700.  So you can see why I let the dealer have my Xterra that day for $4500 and I drove the Prius home.

Didn't mean for this to turn into a Prius commercial, but there was an article that Consumer Reports did a while back in order to answer the question about battery life. 

It's quoted in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius


"Many critics of the Prius have claimed that the nickel metal and rare earth metals used in the HV battery and traction motors of a Prius produces an environmental problem, failing to recognize that the bulk majority of the materials in the Prius, especially the traction battery and electric traction motors are highly recyclable due to the intrinsic residual value of the materials in these components

As the Prius reached ten years of being available in the U.S. market, in February 2011 Consumer Reports decided to look at the lifetime of the Prius battery and the cost to replace it. The magazine tested a 2002 Toyota Prius with over 200,000 miles on it, and compared the results to the nearly identical 2001 Prius with 2,000 miles tested by Consumer Reports 10 years before. The comparison showed little difference in performance when tested for fuel economy and acceleration. Overall fuel economy of the 2001 model was 40.6 miles per US gallon (5.79 L/100 km; 48.8 mpg-imp) while the 2002 Prius with high mileage delivered 40.4 miles per US gallon (5.82 L/100 km; 48.5 mpg-imp). The magazine concluded that the effectiveness of the battery has not degraded over the long run.[136] The cost of replacing the battery varies between US$2,200 and US$2,600 from a Toyota dealer, but low-use units from salvage yards are available for around US$500. One study indicates it may be worthwhile to rebuild batteries using good blades from defective used batteries.[137]"

I talked with the service writer at the local 'yota dealer and asked him what his experience has been with the traction battery.  He said that other than a few failures they had early on with the first generation of the Prius, the only ones he's seen replaced have been the result of traffic accidents. 

[vdubnut62]

Even my Japanese 4.2L, 2.5 ton 4WD tank with the aerodynamics of a block of flats gets over 30 MPG with a little care and not too much of a load and that's on veg oil.

Modern Diesel cars from Hyundai, Citroen, Peugeot, Holden/ Vauxhall, Fiat, Kia, Skoda, Seat, Volkswagen, Mini, ford, Volvo and Renault among others all get the same or  better mileage than the prius and they are just conventional vehicles and cost less as well. There are plenty of Petrol vehicles that get very close to the tightarse and cost a heap less and have a lower overall cost of ownership.

When it's possible to get consumption like that  out of a conventional Diesel, The Hybrids leave me underwhelmed.

Glort, the only thing that can be bought here in a Diesel version is a Big-Assed American pickup, a VW, a Mercedes, and just maybe a BMW. I'm not sure if the Bimmer is sold here yet or not, the darn things are out of my price range anyhoo. A new diesel pickup will run $40-60K US dollars and with the DEF and the exhaust reactor burning extra fuel to keep it hot enough not to plug up with soot, the mileage sorta sucks. Thank you EPA! How can one burn more fossil fuel to produce less emissions (waste products)?  Counter intuitive? I think so.
Enjoy your practical vehicles while you got 'em!
My old 85 Jetta diesel averaged 35-36 mpg  that was at full whee most of the time, not very impressive performance with 48hp underfoot, and I always turned the air conditioner off on the Interstate highways when I came to a hill, or I would lose a lot of speed. But it was a lot of fun!
Ron

[Hugh Conway]

Put me in the underwhelmed  about hybrid cars category also.
I have a 1988 Japanese home market Toyota 2litre diesel truck (non-turbo) Gets about same mileage as Prius, AND it is 4WD, AND it is a 1 ton. Not big, not fast, but a real workhorse. Pick-up bed is 5 ft X 9 ft. Carries lots more and out-pulls most any North American made Giganto-truck. Why won't we make these kinds of vehicles here??? BTW the European version turbo diesel Smart Car gets about 90MPG ......WTF
Cheers,
Hugh