Can power inverter be hooked up to Insight?

[Cobb]

Ill read up on Forest Minn and see what I can do. My way would be quick and dirty using off the shelf parts, a deep cycle battery, schmuacher charger.

Yes, thats keeping up with traffic on i95 here with the first run of the 2nd gen. It is very significant considering the eco mods. I imagine without the eco mods Id be looking at the mid 30s for mpg. With conservative driving I was seeing 95 mpg going 55mph on i95 on my way to work and 70 something on my way home.

Originally Posted by drosky

Going from 40 to 50 MPG doesn't sound like a lot but it is actually pretty significant.

[olrowdy01]

Originally Posted by Cobb

A gallon an hour? My Insight uses .19 of a gallon an hour of fuel at idle. Id say a week at that load.

24 hr/day * 7 day = 168 hr/wk. To idle for a week, the Insight would need to use only (10.6 gallons / 168 hr = ) 0.063 of a gallon or (128 x 0.0625 = ) 8 oz of fuel per hour. And that doesn't include any external inverters etc.

[Cobb]

Its more like a day or so, but we dont know what the load will be on the engine and how it would effect fuel consumption. Seems the idle consumption is better than most generators from the start.

[olrowdy01]

Originally Posted by Cobb

Its more like a day or so, but we dont know what the load will be on the engine and how it would effect fuel consumption. Seems the idle consumption is better than most generators from the start.

Yeah but that is comparing a car motor that is only putting out enough power to keep itself running to a generator that is producing its rated electrical output.

An ex-boss of mine had this saying, "A little science goes a long way." Along that line of thought, let's see how much fuel it would take to get 2 kWh of electricity using gasoline. Gasoline has ~33 kWh/Gal of energy,

Gasoline gallon equivalent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Having worked out the answer beforehand.)
By pure chance 0.0625 gallons of fuel could produce (33 x 0.0625 =) 2.08 kWh if you extract all the power out of the fuel at 100% efficiency.

But the Insight gas engine, IMA and AC inverter aren't 100% efficient. As a WAG lets give the Insight gas engine 30% efficiency, the IMA 85% efficiency and the inverter 90% efficient. The combined efficiency would be .3 x .85 x .9 = 23%.

So instead of 0.0625 gallons/hr it would require 0.0625 / 0.23 = 0.272 gallons/hr.

Let's cross check that with just the efficiencies of the IMA and the new 2 kWh inverter using your idling fuel consumption, 0.19 / (.85 * .9) = 0.248 gallons/hr.

The above is close enough for government work.

The Honda EU20 2kW "digital" generator uses 0.169 gal (converting Liters/hr to gallons/hr) to output its rated 1.6 kWh.

EU20i Portable Honda Generator

Just for this example, if the Honda generator could continuously output 2 kWh and the fuel usage increased at the same rate, it might use (2.08 /1.6) * .169 = ~0.22 gallons/hr of fuel. That gives us an estimate that it is 0.0625 / 0.22 = 28% efficient.

All these numbers may vary.
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