[hatchy]

While we're at it, how do the other BEVs do compared with the Bolt at this house assist? Tesla S? 3? Leaf? Fiat 500? Soul? Audi? Volvo?

 

[GregBrew]

While we're at it, how do the other BEVs do compared with the Bolt at this house assist? Tesla S? 3? Leaf? Fiat 500? Soul? Audi? Volvo?

I've got a setup in my 2011 Volt, too. Bought a kit. Works great, and cycles the gen set, as needed. Needs a clamp on the shift lever to hold the button down, otherwise the Volt automatically shuts down.

The Volt's clamp is significantly easier than climbing out the Bolt's passenger door.

 

[cwerdna]

I've got a setup in my 2011 Volt, too. Bought a kit. Works great, and cycles the gen set, as needed. Needs a clamp on the shift lever to hold the button down, otherwise the Volt automatically shuts down.

The Volt's clamp is significantly easier than climbing out the Bolt's passenger door.

On this note, for Bolt, once the car's in READY mode, does this strategy effectively prevent the Bolt's stupid timeout shutdown/auto-park?

Enter on passenger's side. Apply parking brake. Use a pipe or rod to push down on the brake pedal to shift from P to N. Exit from passenger side. I was able to do this but didn't wait 2+ hours.

PG&E may shut off my power on Wednesday at 4 am.

 

[discodanman45]

Tesla may get about 200,000 orders for a powerwall if PGE does shutoff electricity for 3 days. I am thinking about putting an order in.

 

[redpoint5]

There is a difference between PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric), and PGE (Portland General Electric).

 

[One1whaoo.]

evextend.com is on the net, but seems to be sold out of everything: https://www.evextend.com/Chevrolet-Bolt-Inverter-Kit.php

 

[MikeZ]

evextend.com is on the net, but seems to be sold out of everything: https://www.evextend.com/Chevrolet-Bolt-Inverter-Kit.php

If you're interested, send them an email. They do additional runs periodically - and probably sooner if they know there's interested parties out there.

I've got their kit for my Volt, and another for our Bolt (but just a single inverter). Either car would be able to keep essentials (refrigeration/lights/etc) going for several days.

The hot tub and grow lights will just have to take a break when the big one occurs...

 

[ArizonaJon]

In a true power emergency, a house should be able to get by on 10-15 kWh per day. A typical large modern refrigerator only takes 2-3kWh per day. 40kWh?!? What are you doing, growing weed?

For reference, I just calculated my daily use by month during the last 12 months. This includes charging the Bolt which does about 1,000 miles per month. The "winter" usage is about 30 kWh per day. But in the summer when the temp is above 105F, the rate goes to over 70 kWh per day. The average for the year was 42 kWh per day.

 

[California]

It was emphasized in the linked threads but not this thread yet: Hybrids like Volt and Prius have an oversized 12 volt system, because the engine needs to start frequently.
In contrast Bolt has a much smaller 12 volt battery. So the 12 volt inverter systems that work well for Prius etc would likely drain the Bolt battery quickly if used for anything beyond emergency lighting.

Running from the Bolt's traction battery - does anyone make a kit for that?

 

[MikeZ]

It was emphasized in the linked threads but not this thread yet: Hybrids like Volt and Prius have an oversized 12 volt system, because the engine needs to start frequently.
In contrast Bolt has a much smaller 12 volt battery. So the 12 volt inverter systems that work well for Prius etc would likely drain the Bolt battery quickly if used for anything beyond emergency lighting.

Running from the Bolt's traction battery - does anyone make a kit for that?

As far as I know, there's nothing easily available that taps directly into the high voltage battery. What the EV Extend kit (listed above) does is tap into the DC to DC converter. As long as the car is "on" the converter will supply power to the kit, which then gets run thru the inverter. I believe the Volt will supply 1500 W continuously, but the Bolt is less - I think 1000 W. The 12V battery is there and can supply surge power.

If the car turns off, or if you draw more than the DC to DC converter can supply, then you will run down the 12V battery. Otherwise you should have plenty of power to run refrigerators/etc for quite some time.

Sorry ArizonaJon, it's not gonna allow you to keep your house cool in July...

 

[cwerdna]

It was emphasized in the linked threads but not this thread yet: Hybrids like ...Prius have an oversized 12 volt system, because the engine needs to start frequently.
In contrast Bolt has a much smaller 12 volt battery. So the 12 volt inverter systems that work well for Prius etc

As someone who owned a gen 2 Prius for over 13 years, your post is totally incorrect. Prius's 12 volt is as smaller or smaller than the Bolt's, esp. if it's a gen 2 without smart key system. You can see the capacities in a table at http://www.elearnaid.com/12vo1topraub.html.

Gen 1 thru 3 (I don't know about 4) do NOT start the ICE with the 12 volt, PERIOD. It's started by one of the motor generators in the transaxle from the big high voltage battery. Prius has no dedicated starter motor. This is true of all Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive Hybrids at least thru model year '15 (gen 3's last model year was '15) sold in the US market if not beyond it.

The 12 volt in a Prius also plays a similar role as in the Bolt's, to power 12 volt electronics, close the contactor, etc. Prius also has no alternator, but rather a DC to DC converter, just like EVs.

You can see a gen 2 12 volt at the 4 minute mark of

. He doesn't have the original in there. The stock one doesn't say Toyota TrueStart on it.

I believe the white battery that says GS on it in the OP of https://priuschat.com/threads/12v-battery-upgrade-non-smart-key-35a-h-to-smart-key-45a-h.144487/ is the smaller non-smart key system battery. (Memory foggy as my Prius was one with smart key and thus a larger 12 volt.)

 

[Sean Nelson]

Hybrids like Volt and Prius have an oversized 12 volt system, because the engine needs to start frequently.

As someone who owned a gen 2 Prius for over 13 years, your post is totally incorrect.

As a former Prius C owner, I concur with cwerdna. The Prius C has the same kind of tiny 12V battery that the Bolt has. When you "start" the car the high voltage battery is connected and it starts the engine using the drivetrain's high voltage traction motor. There is no 12V starter in the car at all.

 

[California]

Thanks, I learned something here.

 

[NY-Rob]

PG&E may shut off my power on Wednesday at 4 am.

This is now getting national coverage.. they devoted a segment to it on Today (NBC NY) this morning and they mentioned on SXM this as well.

To a casual observer like me it seems like a flawed policy because as mentioned on the news many area residents are now scrambling to find/use gasoline powered generators for possibly several days at a time. Wouldn't that be potentially more dangerous as a source of fires vs. utility lines?

 

[cwerdna]

My power ended up being shut off at ~11:58 pm on 10/9. I am using my inverter off my Bolt right now.

I already encountered the 1 hour timeout in P. Car auto shuts down. I've got it in N now. I entered and exited via the passenger side. Comcrap internet went out at 12:45 am, so I'm tethered to a phone now.

 

[NY-Rob]

^ wow that sucks!

Best of luck bro....

 

[GregBrew]

My power ended up being shut off at ~11:58 pm on 10/9. I am using my inverter off my Bolt right now.

I already encountered the 1 hour timeout in P. Car auto shuts down. I've got it in N now. I entered and exited via the passenger side. Comcrap internet went out at 12:45 am, so I'm tethered to a phone now.

Best of luck to you.

I hope you've got a propane or nat gas barbecue and/or stove. It's time to start eating whats in the fridge. Take food from the freezer, and put it in the fridge until it defrosts. It will keep the fridge cold as it defrosts, and you're eating what was in the fridge. Time to gorge yourself. Better to put on a couple pounds than trash a bunch of very valuable food.

 

[cwerdna]

Best of luck to you.

I hope you've got a propane or nat gas barbecue and/or stove. It's time to start eating whats in the fridge. Take food from the freezer, and put it in the fridge until it defrosts. It will keep the fridge cold as it defrosts, and you're eating what was in the fridge. Time to gorge yourself. Better to put on a couple pounds than trash a bunch of very valuable food.

Thanks. Fortunately, instead of being a multi-day outage, it looks like power got restored around 3 pm on Thurs, 10/10. I'm glad as the worst case would've been an outage for 5 to 7 days.

As for fridge, there was virtually nothing perishable in my fridge anyway. No, I don't have a nat gas or propane stave.

For my freezer, I ended up taking all my frozen stuff to work and putting them in freezers at work. I put my name on them, in the hopes someone wouldn't snag them. On one evening, I took half those items to my parents' house (not knowing how much room they really had).

On this note, for Bolt, once the car's in READY mode, does this strategy effectively prevent the Bolt's stupid timeout shutdown/auto-park?

Enter on passenger's side. Apply parking brake. Use a pipe or rod to push down on the brake pedal to shift from P to N. Exit from passenger side.

Answering my own question. Yes, it works. During the outage, I intentionally woke up every few hours to make sure the car hadn't auto-powered itself down. I didn't need to use any sort of elastic or rubber band to hold anything down or into a certain position.

I didn't need to leave a key fob in the car either although I had it on me whenever I approached my car. I never did open any of the doors or touch any of the buttons. I sometimes just listened for the pedestrian noisemaker sound while going to the garage. I also spent time double checking my setup to make sure I wasn't in any danger of a clamp coming loose or short circuit.

I screwed up on a few things before leaving for work on Thursday morning due to having to rush for a meeting + having to spend extra time to disconnect my inverter then manually opening and closing my garage door. I had no expectation that power would be back until at least Friday. Supposedly, once the weather event passed, PG&E would have to inspect all the lines in the fire hazard areas for damage (that lead to my area) from the weather event and make any repairs, if needed. Original predictions from a few days back were that the high winds would die down around Thurs 5 pm.

By screw up, I meant that I forgot turn the UPSes that ran my Drop Cams, cable modem and wireless access point/router to on so that even though their batteries would die, when power came back up, they'd come back up. Also, I forgot to plug my security camera NVR system's UPS back into the wall outlet for the same thing to happen. I returned home to find all of those things off (2 UPSes off, last one dead due to not being plugged in). Whoops.

Less important was the UPS for my TiVo. I also forgot to turn it back on before leaving.

 

[The Other Tom]

Thanks for the follow up