Pro Power Onboard - Overnight

[RLXXI]

90W minimum? That's insane. My whole home inverter only pulls 21W at idle. Ford engineers, good grief lol.

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[MidAtlanticLightningClub]

For 2024+ models, PPO will turn off if the truck cannot detect a load greater than ~90W for more than 10 minutes while the vehicle is off. You can work around this by keeping the truck in ACCESSORY (no brake + power button) mode or ON (brake + power button) mode, but it comes with a risk:

The vehicle is in drive-off condition.
You will have to manually turn off lights.
You will have to manually turn off climate control.
You may want to cover the displays.

It's likely an attempt by engineers to cut off parasitic losses while the truck is off, but they didn't take into consideration the fact that most PPO use cases are loads that are intermittent in nature.

"Keep on when vehicle is off" is a poorly executed feature by Ford. Tesla and GM do this much better.

I suspect the 90w cutoff is due to the sensitivity of the power monitoring system. The ProPower Onboard readout says <90w any time the inverter is on and has less than a 90w load. When you have a 100w load it will read 100w. Above that it will read the load to the nearest 10w but I don't know what the accuracy and precision are on those readings.

I tested LED, CFL, and halogen bulbs up to 75w. All read <90w.
I tested a 100w incandescent bulb. It read 100w.
I tested a 120w incandescent bulb. It read 130w.

Remember that the detection circuit is always seeing the load caused by the inverter being turned on. The background draw of the inverter probably varies while it's on. The detection circuit is then watching for an increase over that background load.

 

[technomancer]

I've found success keeping Pro Power outlets on indefinitely while the truck is off without huge battery drain by combining an interval cycle timer and dedicated "dummy 90W+ load" into my setup. This allows me to run anything from continuously running low wattage devices during camping trips or sporadic power tool use at a job site without any worry that the outlets might shut off.

My setup:

• Circuit diagram: Low wattage space heater w/o safety switch -> interval cycle timer -> truck
• Cycle timer programming: 5 seconds on; 295 seconds off
• Power savings: ~97% compared to 90W load on continuously

I plug that setup into one of the bed outlets. Since the space heater is only on for 5 seconds, it doesn't generate enough heat to be a problem, even with a tonneau cover over the bed. I found a space heater without the "tip-over" safety switch so the heater isn't prevented from turning on in case it's not perfectly standing up

What I haven't figured out is how to prevent the truck from resetting my "Keep outlets on with truck off" selection. Anytime I turn the truck on when the pro power outlets are active, I notice the "keep outlets on" setting is reset back to off. Its a hassle to ensure the outlets stay active, especially on trips when I make a few long stops and I got a refrigerated cooler in the back

 

[oneparticularparrot]

The simplest solution to this i found was to leave the car running overnight. Turn off the climate system and headlights. Cover the display with a towel. Pro power stays on all night .

This is how I have to set up my 22 to power my RV. I was really hoping to be able to use off as those monitors get really hot after a couple of days.

 

[K6CCC]

My setup:

• Circuit diagram: Low wattage space heater w/o safety switch -> interval cycle timer -> truck
• Cycle timer programming: 5 seconds on; 295 seconds off
• Power savings: ~97% compared to 90W load on continuously

Similar to my setup except I wanted to have the heater on for the absolute minimum amount of time each time it is cycled - so it never warms up. I tested with 1 second of on time and found that at 240 seconds off time the PPO timeout would kill it, but 230 seconds of off time would reliably keep PPO turned on (with no additional load). To give a little room for things changing, I have the timer set to 220 seconds off and 1 second on. In most cases overnight I also have my phone and CPAP machine plugged in.

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