Hi all, This is my first post. I take delivery of my 2009 model with 10000 miles on clock on Saturday 17/10/2015. Noticed the speedo reads mph but the distance recorder reads km. Strange :? I have been experimenting at home with solar panels and wondered if it is possible to fix some flexible panels like used on trailers/ boats etc to the roof of the car and use a 1kw converter to charge the car ? Presumably this would only work when the car is parked & not moving. 100w panels are getting cheap now but don't want to blow anything on the car :evil: Anyone had any experience of doing this successfully ?
Solar panel charging
- Thread starter Astonman2
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Technically, yes, you could charge the car with solar panels, but if we assume 100 W output per square meter you'd need 10 square meters (or 12 square yards) to produce 1 kW of power. The i-MiEV's roof space is considerably smaller. 
You'd then have to convert the output from the panels into something you could use. The best solution would be a DC/DC-converter, which would take panel input and convert it to 360 VDC, which you could feed directly into the car battery, but it's not actually supported by the vehicle so you would need to hack it quite a bit. Not to mention locating such a DC/DC converter (I haven't been able to).
Easier solution would be to get an inverter to convert the DC input from the panels to AC and then use that AC output with the integrated charger, which you can ask to only take in for example 6 A, but you will lose around 10% in each conversion. Practically you would put around 700 W of that 1 kW panel setup into the battery this way.
Easier solution would be to get an inverter to convert the DC input from the panels to AC and then use that AC output with the integrated charger, which you can ask to only take in for example 6 A, but you will lose around 10% in each conversion. Practically you would put around 700 W of that 1 kW panel setup into the battery this way.
Yes, that's what I was thinking of doing. The 1KW invertor I have left over from my experiments with home solar panels takes 24 volts DC from the panels and converts it to 240 volts AC to plug straight to your household socket to supliment your mains power usage. I only managed about 200-300w max with 4 working panels but we don't get many sunny days here in UK ! I just wondered if trickle charging the batteries with this low level of AC power into the car AC charger would be worth doing. If you were parked at work for 9 hours on a sunny day it might add a few miles to your range. I seem to remember reading some where that the latest generation Prius had a solar panel option, maybe just to charge the backup 12 volt accessory battery ?
The problem is that the least you can set the car's charger is 6 amps. It's a little conservative, so it tries to draw 5.5 amps. At 230 volts that's 1265 watts. You can't make it draw any less. So your inverter should be able to put out that much continuous and it's DC source should be able to provide something like 1400 watts, which is about 60 amps at 24 volts DC. So you'd need a bigger inverter and most likely some batteries to store the solar energy into. In any case, it's a good project, even if the actual solar energy to miles on the road might be quite little.
I'm not aware of any OEM vehicle which would charge a traction battery directly from solar. Mostly they just charge the 12 V aux battery.
I'm not aware of any OEM vehicle which would charge a traction battery directly from solar. Mostly they just charge the 12 V aux battery.
wmcbrine
Well-known member
From what I've read, the solar panel on the Prius only drives a fan, to keep the interior from overheating. Which is nice, but sadly it does NOT charge the 12V, which IMHO would be even nicer. Much less the main battery.Astonman2 said:
PV1
Well-known member
I though the Fisker Karma did this, but the roof on that car is so small it only added 1-2 miles a day at the best. The Nissan LEAF SL has a small solar panel in the rear spoiler that keeps the 12 volt battery up. The Prius solar option only runs the cabin fan.jsantala said:
Doing some measuring with the i-MiEV roof and Grape Solar's 100 watt semi-flexible panels, you could fit 300 watts of solar on the roof of the i-MiEV. Like others have mentioned, getting from the 12-48 volt range to 360 volts required to charge the i-MiEV battery is the challenge. What complicates things even further is that the i-MiEV completely disconnects the drive battery from the car when the key is turned off and the car is not charging. There is only high voltage present on the bus when the car is in READY mode, charging, or pre-conditioning.
I've been trying to figure this out, too. The easiest way I've figured out is to tote around an extra 2-3 kWh of 48 volt LiFePO4 with a pure sine wave inverter to output 6 amps at 240 volts (having plentiful access to 120 volts is a benefit here in the States). The problem I see, though, is that you have one of the first i-MiEVs sold. The 2009-2010 cars hit the road before the J1772 standard was finalized. They may use that connector, but it simply passes power straight through with no signaling. The car is set at a certain amperage and that's that as far as I know. What you could do is meter the consumption (is there a UK equivalent to the Kill a Watt?) and buy a standalone inverter with a rating equal to or higher than what the car pulls in amps or watts. The inverter you described will not work in this scenario, as those type inverters require voltage to already be present. If you can wire flexible panels together to get 48 volts nominal through a solar charge controller to a 48 volt battery bank, then you could run the inverter from that battery to charge the car the same as if it was plugged into a wall. The question is, how much extra battery do you want to tote and how much extra range will you actually get? Without any losses, I calculated that a 300 watt solar roof would add 3-5 miles of range per sunny day, but that doesn't count the range hit from extra weight, extra aero drag, and efficiency losses through the inverter and charger. You may end up breaking even or not quite, as the UK doesn't get as powerful solar radiation as where I live.
Probably the simplest and cheapest way to get benefit from solar is to get a micro-inverter, which just inserts it's output into existing power line and simply charge only when the solar output is at it's maximum. If you can limit the power intake of the vehicle to a minimum would help in this scenario as well. Keeping in mind of course that lower charging speed is less efficient due to the other equipment which always runs during charging.
Nice license plate !
I have a small domestic inverter which I was going to use which takes 12-30 volts dc in and gives up to 1KW AC 240 volts out depending on the dc current input. As ponted out earlier, I didn't think about the "island" protection built in to stop the inverter trying to supply the whole neighborhood in the event of a mains power outage, so it would be useless to connect straight to the car as no mains voltage would be detected hence it would shut down. A simple camping style inverter might work that is available to power mains devices from your 12 volt car battery as they are cheap to buy now. I have a wall mounted 5 KW inverter for a domestic solar systems but I am unable to try it as it needs 100-200 volts dc input to fire up and I don't have enough solar panels yet to use it Maybe I should stick to trying to supplement my household electricity to cut the bill down when charging the car.
I still don't have my iMiev yet as the vendor had not used it for a while and the batteries were flat. She charged them up and entered the wrong immobiliser code which locked her out The car has been trailered to the nearest main dealer to be re-programmed ! At least it will have a new 12 volt aux. battery as this was ruined by lack of charge and of course the car won't work if this is no good ?
Another question I have : Is it possible to replace individual failed cells in the main traction battery pack ? I fix devices that use Li-ion batteries and one cell failing can ruin the whole pack.
Can you extend the range of the car by fitting more cells ? Charging stations are not yet popular in the UK unless you live in London so a long journey would have to be planned in advance or carry a 5KW petrol generator in the boot to charge up on the road side :lol: Defeats the object of having a green car a bit. :twisted:
I read a few years ago there were companies in the USA that would convert your Prius to plug in charging with a larger extra battery pack and hack the software to increase the electric mode speed to about 60mph instead of up to 30mph on the standard car. The battery pack had built in fire extinguishers which sounded a bit scarey. Are there any mods like this for the iMiev or maybe I should read other posts in the Forum while waiting for my iMiev to be delivered
I have a small domestic inverter which I was going to use which takes 12-30 volts dc in and gives up to 1KW AC 240 volts out depending on the dc current input. As ponted out earlier, I didn't think about the "island" protection built in to stop the inverter trying to supply the whole neighborhood in the event of a mains power outage, so it would be useless to connect straight to the car as no mains voltage would be detected hence it would shut down. A simple camping style inverter might work that is available to power mains devices from your 12 volt car battery as they are cheap to buy now. I have a wall mounted 5 KW inverter for a domestic solar systems but I am unable to try it as it needs 100-200 volts dc input to fire up and I don't have enough solar panels yet to use it
Maybe I should stick to trying to supplement my household electricity to cut the bill down when charging the car.I still don't have my iMiev yet as the vendor had not used it for a while and the batteries were flat. She charged them up and entered the wrong immobiliser code which locked her out
The car has been trailered to the nearest main dealer to be re-programmed ! At least it will have a new 12 volt aux. battery as this was ruined by lack of charge and of course the car won't work if this is no good ?Another question I have : Is it possible to replace individual failed cells in the main traction battery pack ? I fix devices that use Li-ion batteries and one cell failing can ruin the whole pack.
Can you extend the range of the car by fitting more cells ? Charging stations are not yet popular in the UK unless you live in London so a long journey would have to be planned in advance or carry a 5KW petrol generator in the boot to charge up on the road side :lol: Defeats the object of having a green car a bit. :twisted:
I read a few years ago there were companies in the USA that would convert your Prius to plug in charging with a larger extra battery pack and hack the software to increase the electric mode speed to about 60mph instead of up to 30mph on the standard car. The battery pack had built in fire extinguishers which sounded a bit scarey. Are there any mods like this for the iMiev or maybe I should read other posts in the Forum while waiting for my iMiev to be delivered
misterbleepy
Well-known member
Astonman2 said:
Whereabouts in the UK are you?
Ecotricity run a national network of rapid chargers (chademo) and many service stations on the motorway network have 1 or more of these.
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/for-the-road/our-electric-highway
And there are a few other networks offering both rapid and conventional 240v 3.3kw+ charging, so it's not a complete charging desert out there.
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post a link to another forum here - there is a well subscribed UK EV forum that covers UK charging issues very well - it's called SpeakEV if you want to search for it.
Saying that, this is definitely the place to be for specific i-MiEV (plus Peugeot iOn and Citroen C-Zero) topics
PV1
Well-known member
Yep, a grid-tied inverter will not work as a standalone power source. You need to have an Off-grid power inverter, preferably a pure sine wave unit and not a modified sine wave.Astonman2 said:I have a small domestic inverter which I was going to use which takes 12-30 volts dc in and gives up to 1KW AC 240 volts out depending on the dc current input. As ponted out earlier, I didn't think about the "island" protection built in to stop the inverter trying to supply the whole neighborhood in the event of a mains power outage, so it would be useless to connect straight to the car as no mains voltage would be detected hence it would shut down. A simple camping style inverter might work that is available to power mains devices from your 12 volt car battery as they are cheap to buy now. I have a wall mounted 5 KW inverter for a domestic solar systems but I am unable to try it as it needs 100-200 volts dc input to fire up and I don't have enough solar panels yet to use it
That sucks. While you must know what you are doing and understand the risks of working near 360 volts DC with no overcurrent protection, then yes, an individual cell can be replaced, and has been done by a forum member already. If you look around, there is a time-lapse video of the process. I believe it is in the thread "Battery only charging halfway".I still don't have my iMiev yet as the vendor had not used it for a while and the batteries were flat. She charged them up and entered the wrong immobiliser code which locked her out
Another question I have : Is it possible to replace individual failed cells in the main traction battery pack ? I fix devices that use Li-ion batteries and one cell failing can ruin the whole pack.
Can you extend the range of the car by fitting more cells ? Charging stations are not yet popular in the UK unless you live in London so a long journey would have to be planned in advance or carry a 5KW petrol generator in the boot to charge up on the road side :lol: Defeats the object of having a green car a bit. :twisted:
No-one here has attempted to increase the capacity of the main battery, so we don't know if re-packing the battery with higher capacity cells will allow an increased range due to the functions of the BMS. What has been proven to extend the range is to add an auxiliary battery pack. This is a second pack made up of 88 cells or groups of cells wired in series to match the pack voltage and charge/discharge characteristics. Although there are no communication connections between an aux. pack and the car, the car simply sees the aux. pack as either reduced energy consumption or regen because of where the pack ties into the high voltage bus. This also means that you must have contactors disconnecting the aux pack, both positive and negative connections, at the same time as the main pack's positive contactor breaks the connection. This is actually not that complicated, as the driver for the main pack + contactor can also drive both aux. pack contactors. This way, the pack automatically connects for driving and charging, but disconnects when the car is off. The design of the i-MiEV powertrain has the main battery disconnect all external power when the car is off with a resistor to discharge the high voltage components. If the aux. pack stays connected while the car is off, this discharge circuit may try to discharge the aux. pack to 0 volts, which would destroy the pack, if the resistor doesn't burn out first. To try to keep this on topic (as there are a number of threads relating to different range extending methods), it is rather difficult to put panels on the roof of the car and get the voltage boosted to the pack's voltage. It could be done, but with the smallish roof of the i-MiEV, you'd be better off to put four 280 watt solar panels on your house with micro-inverters, then charge the car normally. You can still do an aux. pack for extended range. Having the panels on your house would also allow any generated solar power that wasn't used for the car to be put towards powering the house.I read a few years ago there were companies in the USA that would convert your Prius to plug in charging with a larger extra battery pack and hack the software to increase the electric mode speed to about 60mph instead of up to 30mph on the standard car. The battery pack had built in fire extinguishers which sounded a bit scarey. Are there any mods like this for the iMiev or maybe I should read other posts in the Forum while waiting for my iMiev to be delivered
There were a few companies doing Prius conversions. I think some still are. Built-in fire extinguishers are not a bad idea. Having a lithium pack go thermal on you is not something you want to be near (phenomenon called thermal runaway. One cell suffers an internal short circuit, gets really hot, and heats up the surrounding cells enough for them to fail, eventually consuming most of the pack and anything flammable around it). I don't recall of any production EV packs suffering thermal runaway that wasn't caused by physical damage.
Genec, I also have a decal showing solar power going to the house, then to the car. When people read that it is solar-powered, everybody immediately either looks at the roof or asks where the panels are. I also have "Powered by Pennsylvania Sunlight" under the decal to help dispel the myth that my area doesn't get enough sunlight. I had to be careful how I worded it, as there once was an oil tanker called "Pennsylvania Sun". That wouldn't be good. :lol: :roll:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o9iq3clzo7weynl/i-MiEV%20Decal.png?dl=0
Hello alegra89 and welcome to the forum. Might I suggest that you read all the posts in this thread in order to understand the complexity of the issue, as well as perhaps do the math to understand the really minute contribution that a 100W solar panel might have relative to the total energy required to drive the car.
1branchonthevine
Member
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- Oct 30, 2015
- Messages
- 6
Been researching this since we got our imiev 2 years ago... If Anyone wants more detail on how far i am, and what i know about it already, just ask.
As for power supplies, the meanwell led drivers go up to 360v and more, but your solar array will have to have a series output of 127vdc or more to drive it. I'm in the process of making a custom stacked rooftop solar array. Although it wouldn't output much wattage, it is more for fun and concept than necessity.
Good luck!
As for power supplies, the meanwell led drivers go up to 360v and more, but your solar array will have to have a series output of 127vdc or more to drive it. I'm in the process of making a custom stacked rooftop solar array. Although it wouldn't output much wattage, it is more for fun and concept than necessity.
Good luck!
Thanks for your post and always interested in harvesting solar and its wide-ranging voltages and then being able to feed directly into a high voltage battery such as our i-MiEV's. Here are the specs for the two Meanwell LED drivers you pointed at in the other post:1branchonthevine said:
http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/260/meanwell_HLG-320H-C-spec-914652.pdf
https://www.mouser.com/ds/2/260/HVGC-150-spec-238292.pdf
Please, do tell us about your progress as you dabble in this area.
Cross-reference to the other solar thread:
http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=533
Given that PV panels and inverters prices are definitely getting better and better; I am thinking of adding some panels diy but don't want to hassle with permit and inspection etc... I recently found a local distributor so I wouldn't have to pay shipping.
One option is to do an "off-grid/standalone" configuration and use the iMiev pack sort of like a poor man Tesla Power Off. My current thinking is to hook up some panels to a DC charge controller to charge a small Ahr lead pack, may 2 or 4 of these cheapy Marine from Walmart
https://www.walmart.com/ip/EverStart-Maxx-Marine-Battery-Group-Size-29DC/20531539
I believe these are 105Ah each. The idea is to use the lead to smooth out the variable nature of solar, and invert the 24/48vdc to 240-vac to charge the iMiev on level 2.
Still have to work out the details how to prevent discharge the lead too low. In fact, the iMiev probably should only get charged when it's sunny.
To pull the juice back out, the simplest way is probably to use the 12vdc-120vac inverter to charge the other EV at level 1 overnight.
any thought, comments, suggestions are most welcomed and very much appreciated....
thanks, pb
One option is to do an "off-grid/standalone" configuration and use the iMiev pack sort of like a poor man Tesla Power Off. My current thinking is to hook up some panels to a DC charge controller to charge a small Ahr lead pack, may 2 or 4 of these cheapy Marine from Walmart
https://www.walmart.com/ip/EverStart-Maxx-Marine-Battery-Group-Size-29DC/20531539
I believe these are 105Ah each. The idea is to use the lead to smooth out the variable nature of solar, and invert the 24/48vdc to 240-vac to charge the iMiev on level 2.
Still have to work out the details how to prevent discharge the lead too low. In fact, the iMiev probably should only get charged when it's sunny.
To pull the juice back out, the simplest way is probably to use the 12vdc-120vac inverter to charge the other EV at level 1 overnight.
any thought, comments, suggestions are most welcomed and very much appreciated....
thanks, pb
One thing that regularly using a lead-acid EV has driven home is the inefficiency of that charge-discharge cycle. It takes 50% more energy (wall-to-wheels) to recharge the lead car after my commute than it does MR BEAN. Of course up to half of those xtra losses are in the heavier vehicle and less-efficient drivetrain, but I'm not planning to purchase any more lead, especially for deep cycle applications. You'd be better off using grid tie micro inverters and then charging off the grid. If battery backup is desirable, float charge them from the grid, but avoid unnecessary cycles. If not getting a permit or hiring an electrician is your priority, going "guerilla solar" is easier and safer than ever thanks to micro inverters, even if using a "suicide plug", as the micros will only output power after sensing a healthy grid connection.
I have an 1850 Watt PV array that is grid tied, but the same box contains a mppt charger keeping 48V of lead topped off. If the grid goes down, I'll have 3000 Watts (8.16 kWh) of backup power that can be replenished by solar during an extended outage. :mrgreen:
I have an 1850 Watt PV array that is grid tied, but the same box contains a mppt charger keeping 48V of lead topped off. If the grid goes down, I'll have 3000 Watts (8.16 kWh) of backup power that can be replenished by solar during an extended outage. :mrgreen:
We have already have a 5kw grid-tie system and am just toying with the idea of adding more panels. The easier and most cost effective way would be to slap on additional panels with micro-inverter grid-tied. Since our address is already permitted for solar production, it ought to work just fine; though technically we would still need to go through the inspection/permit process.
Yes, lead is quite inefficient and short lived. But I was thinking of using the lead as a buffer to the larger iMiev pack, sort of like caching. The idea is to keep the lead pack cycling shallow and pass the cycling to the iMiev pack. But using the lead buffer in between and converting to AC voltage, I don't have to deal with BMS for the iMiev pack.
Like your 48v set up, you can keep the 48v SOC up by charging it from the iMiev pack. And when the 48v lead is full and sunny, have the 48v charges the iMiev ?
It is not the most efficient path way for sure; I like to build a car port and thought to cover it with PV panels.
Yes, lead is quite inefficient and short lived. But I was thinking of using the lead as a buffer to the larger iMiev pack, sort of like caching. The idea is to keep the lead pack cycling shallow and pass the cycling to the iMiev pack. But using the lead buffer in between and converting to AC voltage, I don't have to deal with BMS for the iMiev pack.
Like your 48v set up, you can keep the 48v SOC up by charging it from the iMiev pack. And when the 48v lead is full and sunny, have the 48v charges the iMiev ?
It is not the most efficient path way for sure; I like to build a car port and thought to cover it with PV panels.