Battery Blanket
 

I thought that I would add a few pictures on the addition of a battery blanket on my Camry. Since I live in a bitterly cold environment, and that the car has to sit outside a lot of nights, I decided to add some assistance to the engine block heater already installed. I struggled to find a suitable blanket that would keep the batteries warm, but not burn a lot of power. The block heater already burns a little over 400watts, I did not want to add a in car heater since they consume too much electricity. I settled on a 80 watts blanket that is used to keep standard batteries warm and instead of wrapping it around, I just layed it flat. I routed the power cord as shown in the pictures, and connected it in with the engine block heater cord so that only one plug needs to be plugged in.

Re: Battery Blanket
 

Can you monitor the temperature of the hybrid battery in your vehicle? Do you have a scanguage II unit?

Re: Battery Blanket
 

That's a good idea to warm the traction battery in the cold weather. At dusk it cools off fast here were we live. I have noticed the warmer the batteries the faster they take a charge. They also drain slower when warm.

It would be nice if the traction battery would stay that way during the cold winters.

Re: Battery Blanket
 

Interesting idea. I would be curious to know whether you consume more energy heating the engine block and battery than you save on added MPG once you get started.

Re: Battery Blanket
 

400W block heater, 80W battery warmer, lets say 500W total or .5KWh @ $0.05/KWh = $0.025/hr to run.

On a timer for 4 hrs before leaving in the morning, $0.10

Gas right now is $1/l or $3.79/USgal

How much does it save? Don't know that one:)

Re: Battery Blanket
 

Not bad, we pay about $0.09 per kilowatt hour, but point taken, $0.10 or $0.20 is not a lot of money compared to the price of gas.

Re: Battery Blanket
 

But wait, there has recently been a huge spike in the value of the US dollar compared to the Canadian dollar. I think you now get $1.30 CAN for each $1.00 US.

Re: Battery Blanket
 

To clarify things in this case, I do not have to pay for the power consumed. My wife takes the car to work and plugs it in at the parking lot. Most parking lots have their own plug-ins here since -30 to -40 C is not unusual in this area in the winter months. To add to that, windshill can be extreme, so the car cools off much quicker to the ambient temperature.
For information sake, electrical cost here is about .06cents/KWh and when you include all the taxes, it adds up to about .09cents/KWh.
I do not plug my car in at home where it sits in an unheated insulated garage but even with -30C outside, it usually doesn't go lower then -10C.

I have a scanguage, but I do not have the command sequence to send to find the SOC and the battery temps. I keep hoping that someone will want to share with the rest of the group once it is discovered ;)

Cheers

Re: Battery Blanket
 

Wow, I don't think I will be planning any trips to Winnipeg this winter.

Re: Battery Blanket
 

Bit of a calculation error
480 watts times 4 hours = 1.920 kwh@ 9cents per kwh which includes all taxes surcharges and delivery charges amounts to about 17.28 cents per day or $5.18 per month or $63.07 per year.

given that gas is around 2.50 per gallon we could buy 25.228 gallons of additional gasoline which would allow us to travel a further distance of about 1000 miles.

One must wonder if we are really saving anything.