Wiring up an APC UPS in a Chevy Volt

[GiveMeTheJuice!]

I'm looking for help getting an inverter connected to and running in my car. Sounds simple, but my car doesn't have the required voltage to run the inverter.

I have a Smart APC UPS SMT1000 ( pure sine wave ) that requires 24V, this is the inverter I want to use.

My Chevy Volt has a glass matt 12v battery, aka starter battery. As part of the cars charging system for starter battery, a thingamajig  is used that pulls juice from the traction battery and reduces the voltage and charges the traction battery. This thingamajig is like a modern alternator. It does the same thing w/out a pulley.

What I need help with is leveraging the "alternator" and traction battery to supply and/or recharge juice the UPS draws while both the car and UPS are running.

Its understood I would need to connect two 12v batteries together to power the UPS/inverter. Further, I understand these connected batteries need to be isolated from the Volt otherwise the circuits connecting to the 12v would get 24v.


If I have two 12v batteries connected to produce 24v, how could I leverage the Chevy volt to charge them?

[jamesglanville]

Can't you just use a 12v->24v dc-dc boost converter? I don't know what sort of power you want to get out of the car, but I imagine you'll run into problems pulling enough current from the car before a dc-dc converter gets too expensive.

[GiveMeTheJuice!]

Sounds good to me

What do I look for in a high quality 12v->24v dc-dc boost converter? Would I look for a specific brand and trust what they make? If yes, what brand would that be?

[mtdoc]

Doug Coulter put a cheap 12V inverter into his Volt. Have a look on his forum HERE

[ConKbot]

This sounds like it would end up being a kludge on top of a bodge.   A lot of UPSes count on the battery being isolated, not connected to your 'earth' ground. That and UPSes aren't meant to run continuously, so cooling and whatnot can be an issue.  Given the price for a 1200+ W 12v to 24v converter thats isolated, you might as well just buy a 1kW 12V input sine wave inverter, wire it up to the battery, and be done with it. 

[max_torque]

You also need to be aware the Volts DC-DC convertor isn't that powerful, as a lot of the high current consumers are driven directly off the HV battery (AC/cabin heater etc) So you don't want to be fitting a massive inverter that will end up draining the low capacity LV battery