raytaylor:
.......I am on the contact free 9-midnight plan.
I have the hot water cylinder on a timer because the local ripple control turns it on too early in the evening so I delay it until 9pm with a timer. ............
But anyhow, i dont get what powerswitch has to do with ripple control.
Thank for your interesting post Ray. I think the experience is useful to confirm the theory while being respectful of other posters.
There's been some recent doubt expressed about how much energy is lost when a tank is not heated, you confirm the some is lost over time, thank you.
I also considered the same Contact plan. Our house is not as friendly to your implementation, at least at this time. Not sure I'd get two (or three?!) night stores approved. One can focus everything on using power during the free period as you have no doubt done well, but what if Contact decides to withdraw the plan? No doubt part of the answer lies in you are set up with timers so can exploit other free / time of use power bands. I looked at your spreadsheet but there was insufficient labeling and seemingly much too much replication of data to make any useful comparisons. How much do you end up paying each month? How do you measure your in tank hot water temperatures?
Powerswitch fails to assess or distinguish the cost of the available load control scenarios. For example Powerswitch would not tell me I would be better to change from CN19 to NO8 or NB10 or drop load control (or install load control) which might save significant power and be the most efficient plan.