Over the past couple months we’ve been thinking about how to have electricity while we’re building our house. We’ll need it for operating circular saws, drills, and other power tools. One solution is to buy a gas-powered electric generator. But this means purchasing another complicated piece of equipment — one that is loud when operating, costs at least $700, and is probably overkill for our requirements. We prefer simple things, remember?
I wondered if there was any way we could utilize the battery power in our Prius. I went on the Prius Chat message boards and found a few people who had installed standard 110v AC electric outlets by using an inverter. It looked relatively simple and cheap, so I bought a Xantrex Xpower Plus 1200 watt inverter and had it installed. In addition to serving the power tools that we’ll need while building our house, AC outlets will also come in handy when we want to charge our cell phones, laptops, and other devices while we’re on the road.
The total investment was $150 for the inverter, $66 for the installation (parts and labor), and $14 for a 15′ heavy-duty extension cord to run from the rear hatch up under the carpet to the front passenger seat (where we can plug in things). There’s also another spare outlet at the inverter, which is installed under the cargo floor, that we can use to plug in external devices such as the power tools.
Some things to keep in mind:
The car must be on and started for the inverter to work properly or it will drain the 12v battery. In the Prius the 12v battery is the size used in motorcycles, about half the capacity of a normal car battery. While the car is “on”, the electric power comes from the main hybrid battery pack which is a whopping 200 volts. There is a DC-DC stepdown converter that changes the 200v to the 12v to which the inverter is connected. In theory, while the car is on, the hybrid system supplies all of the power to the inverter so there should be no issues — if the hybrid battery pack gets low, the car will start the gas engine to charge it.
You must know the watt and/or amp ratings of the devices you wish to use. It’s probably not a big deal for low power devices like laptops and cell phones, but once you get into using devices that either a) have a motor or b) generate heat, you must be sure to not overload the inverter. Most items are labeled in watts or amps. In the case of watts, just make sure that the amount of watts used by the devices don’t add up to more than 1,000 (or whatever the rating of your inverter). For amps, you must multiply amps x 110 (volts AC). So a 6.5 amp device would use 715 watts, for example.
Prius Inverter Installation Pictures
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