Hot water Cylinder help.

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#1321967 10-Jun-2015 11:19

timmmay: I checked my usage - including one oil heater to keep a room from getting too cold I used around 4 units of power between when we go to bed and when the heat pump comes on before we get up. Average usage in a day is 35 - 50 units.

As an aside, on Flick it tells me I've saved 30% compared with what I'd have been on with my last power company. That's better than the average Flick customer saving of 25%, and will get better when I load shift the most of the hot water heating to 3am.

Thanks timmmay, incl a heater, 4kwh sounds reasonable, i think. but then your average usage in a day is way too high. So may be you have a very big home or lot of people or may a little bit mix of both may be ? hmmm i dont know . whats your average power bill ( in kwh and $ ) when you are not using any heaters whatsoever. And also, can you check what was your overnight power consumtion when you didnt use your heater.

sorry for too many questions, but i am just trying to analyse what sort of usage gives what sort of values and so on and so forth .

thanks :)

MikeAqua

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#1321977 10-Jun-2015 11:33

Sep11guy: It would still be worth insulating your cylinder. You get the biggest savings by insulating older cylinders. You can buy cylinder wraps from hardware stores. They are reasonably easy to install.

It is usually easy to tell if your power company controls your hot water cylinder.

1) You will normally have two power meters on your switch board
2) You will have a device labelled 'ripple controller' or similar on your switchboard

Mike

Aredwood

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#1322033 10-Jun-2015 12:31

The number of meters you have depends on the policy of your lines company. In Auckland most houses only have 1 meter. And in North Shore and west. A pilot wire relay for control. Other areas of Auckland use ripple control.

sep11guy

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#1322052 10-Jun-2015 12:42

my board has 2 meters, but i have been reading my meter which corresponds to the power bill i receive in mail box . so i belive the one i am reading would be the smart meter ? i think so , i have no clue what the other one does - it probably does nothing , it just sits there cuz it was being used previously and now it isnt. i wouldnot have a clue.

timmmay

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#1322054 10-Jun-2015 12:44

sep11guy:
timmmay: I checked my usage - including one oil heater to keep a room from getting too cold I used around 4 units of power between when we go to bed and when the heat pump comes on before we get up. Average usage in a day is 35 - 50 units.

As an aside, on Flick it tells me I've saved 30% compared with what I'd have been on with my last power company. That's better than the average Flick customer saving of 25%, and will get better when I load shift the most of the hot water heating to 3am.

Thanks timmmay, incl a heater, 4kwh sounds reasonable, i think. but then your average usage in a day is way too high. So may be you have a very big home or lot of people or may a little bit mix of both may be ? hmmm i dont know . whats your average power bill ( in kwh and $ ) when you are not using any heaters whatsoever. And also, can you check what was your overnight power consumtion when you didnt use your heater.

sorry for too many questions, but i am just trying to analyse what sort of usage gives what sort of values and so on and so forth .

thanks :)

Summer bills average around $150-170, winter bills average $260 according to quick calculations but sometimes reach $350. This is for an older 140sqm house, ceiling wall and floor insulation, some double glazing, two people living there who prioritise comfort over cost. We have modern appliances, good energy saving practices (TV off at the wall, heating only when and where required), with underfloor heating in the bathroom set to a low/moderate temp overnight. Old houses will never be as efficient as new houses. I've long thought our power bills are far too high, changing to a digital/smart meter is one step to investigate that. Next step will be redo the meter box to include energy measurement.

sep11guy

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#1322056 10-Jun-2015 12:49

timmmay:

Summer bills average around $150-170, winter bills average $260 according to quick calculations but sometimes reach $350. This is for an older 140sqm house, ceiling wall and floor insulation, some double glazing, two people living there who prioritise comfort over cost. We have modern appliances, good energy saving practices (TV off at the wall, heating only when and where required), with underfloor heating in the bathroom set to a low/moderate temp overnight. Old houses will never be as efficient as new houses. I've long thought our power bills are far too high, changing to a digital/smart meter is one step to investigate that. Next step will be redo the meter box to include energy measurement.

oh k , kwl thats not bad. my bill shud be somewere around the same $150-$180 mark, lets hope i can get it down it this time ( with the issue i was getting $290-$220)

Jase2985

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#1322208 10-Jun-2015 14:36

take a photo, speaks 1000 words :)

id wrap the heater, and the first few meters of pipe out of it.

and also find out if its ripple controlled and if your on a night rate for electricity

lxsw20

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#1322250 10-Jun-2015 15:31

sep11guy: my board has 2 meters, but i have been reading my meter which corresponds to the power bill i receive in mail box . so i belive the one i am reading would be the smart meter ? i think so , i have no clue what the other one does - it probably does nothing , it just sits there cuz it was being used previously and now it isnt. i wouldnot have a clue.

The second thing will be your ripple control box. Take a photo so we can confirm.

SumnerBoy

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#1322254 10-Jun-2015 15:37

Great example of how much value proper monitoring of your electricity usage can provide. If this sort of thing happened at my place I would know almost instantly as I have dedicated monitors on my grid connection, solar PV feed, underfloor heatpump, and HWC circuits. All from one EmonTX device from OpenEnergyMonitor.org. These have provision for 4 CT clamps so you can monitor 4 different circuits at once.

Being able to see when various things are happening in your home in terms of electricity usage provides great insight into how you can improve/reduce your usage. And identify periods of high usage you didn't perhaps realise were happening. All pretty much guess work without proper monitoring.

timmmay

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#1322280 10-Jun-2015 16:17

SumnerBoy: Great example of how much value proper monitoring of your electricity usage can provide. If this sort of thing happened at my place I would know almost instantly as I have dedicated monitors on my grid connection, solar PV feed, underfloor heatpump, and HWC circuits. All from one EmonTX device from OpenEnergyMonitor.org. These have provision for 4 CT clamps so you can monitor 4 different circuits at once.

Being able to see when various things are happening in your home in terms of electricity usage provides great insight into how you can improve/reduce your usage. And identify periods of high usage you didn't perhaps realise were happening. All pretty much guess work without proper monitoring.

Can you tell us more about this? How the clamps work, cost and effort to put it in place, if it can work with a standard meter box, an old meter box, etc.

SumnerBoy

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#1322295 10-Jun-2015 16:27

Sure - the clamps are just standard current sensing clamps - you clip them around a single phase (L or N but not both or they will cancel each other out). OpenEnergyMonitor are based in the UK and have a number of products available, but I went with the basic EmonTX Arduino Shield. It is clips on top of an Arduino UNO and can take up to 4 x CT clamps and a single AC voltage sensor (just a 240V:9V AC adapter) which is used to ensure you are measuring real power.

You load a sketch (provided by OEM) which will take readings from the current sensors and the voltage sensor and calculate the real power. It can require a bit of calibration but once setup is very accurate IME.

So you need a power point for the voltage sensor, and to power the Arduino (I power mine using POE via another ethernet shield). The CT clamps are completely non-invasive, they just clip around the wires so are *relatively* easy/safe to install.

There is a load of very useful info on the OEM site, and they have just released a new all-in-one device which does the monitoring (like my EmonTX) as well as run their server software, EmonCMS, which you can use to build your own dashboards and graphs etc.

www.openenergymonitor.org

I have no affiliation with OEM other than being a happy customer and active forum member!

kotuku4

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#1322322 10-Jun-2015 17:03

timmmay:
SumnerBoy: Great example of how much value proper monitoring of your electricity usage can provide. If this sort of thing happened at my place I would know almost instantly as I have dedicated monitors on my grid connection, solar PV feed, underfloor heatpump, and HWC circuits. All from one EmonTX device from OpenEnergyMonitor.org. These have provision for 4 CT clamps so you can monitor 4 different circuits at once.

Being able to see when various things are happening in your home in terms of electricity usage provides great insight into how you can improve/reduce your usage. And identify periods of high usage you didn't perhaps realise were happening. All pretty much guess work without proper monitoring.

Can you tell us more about this? How the clamps work, cost and effort to put it in place, if it can work with a standard meter box, an old meter box, etc.

I am interested in how you run your hot water heating with solar PV. I have 4.8 kW solar PV grid connected, and followed recommendation from installer for a timer to be installed for the hot water heating circuit in place of circuit breaker. I set the hot water to be on during the day during sunshine hours and off at night, but not sure if it should be heating all day or reduced to a few hours during the day? Does anyone have more experience with this setup?

SumnerBoy

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#1322327 10-Jun-2015 17:18

My PV diverter is just a custom sketch on the EmonTX I am using to monitor my electricity usage. It is based on the work done by Robin Emley at http://mk2pvrouter.co.uk/. Basically it continuously monitors my connection to the grid. Whenever it begins exporting the sketch starts switching a SSR relay to pulse my HWC at just the right rate to ensure my exported electricity drops back to zero, i.e. is diverted to the the HWC, without importing as that would start costing me money!

So if it is nice and sunny my HWC gets plenty of juice. But if someone flicks on the kettle and all of a sudden I don't have as much excess to export, the PV diverter will automatically reduce the pulsing rate to the HWC. Obviously this sort of pulsing is only suitable for resistive loads, you couldn't do this with a heat pump for example.

There are at least 2-3 others here on GZ who have bought one of Robins standalone kits and are using it locally. And countless others in the UK and the rest of the world.

His site has a load of information and he is a very helpful chap who frequents the OEM forums a lot and is always willing to offer advice. His handle on OEM is calypso_rae.

kotuku4

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#1323158 12-Jun-2015 08:35

Hi

I would like to optimize hot water cylinder heating using the timer I have for now.

I have just finished retrofit double glazing, and tidy up internal trim. Current project is getting connected to UFB could have taken 7 days, except for a glitch pushing a snake through the conduit. Now waiting 7 weeks, for neighbours consent in right of way and then further investigation.

Will plan for a PV Diverter, while I understand in principal how it works, I need to work read through which system to get and discuss with electrician to fit.

sep11guy

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#1323196 12-Jun-2015 09:00

Update :

Twist in the story.

When i got home y'day, i found that the day time standby usage went upto 19kwh ( business hrs when no one is using ) so i told the plumber what was happening.

he told me that he had "refurbished the relief valve " ( previously on phone he said he changed washer ) , and then he told me that relief valve must be the issue , it must have got broken casing ( or something on those lines ) .

Again today morning i checked the meter , it has consumed 15kwh over night, which again means that the previous work didnt fix the issue.

So I have told him again to look into it this morning. He will be changing the relief valve ( thats what he told me ) , so touch wood this shud fix it.

I have no clue myself. If this will be the solution . I will continue monitoring for next 2 -3 days to see how it goes,. Bill so far is 1) elec $100 + 2) plumber first bill approx $240 = total $340

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