Electrical Consumption - Measuring my stuff

[daepp]

I kept cutting back on the run time till I had it at the utmost minimum - 3 hours during the winter and six during the summer.

The motor was indeed big and you're correct about the pool size - its 11 feet deep and very long. If I ever free up a large sum of cash I am going to redesign it to five feet deep in the middle and three on each end. Plus a swim step. But for now I just want to get the electric bill down.

[red-beard]

2 hp pump? How many gallons is your pool?

[daepp]

The pool is very large, and I don't say that to boast. My kids were all swimmers and water polo players, but they seldom ever used OUR pool. By the end of the day they'd had enough water I guess

The deep end is 11 feet, and it remains deep for over half of the pool's length. The prior owner who put it in said he never wanted one of his kids to hit their head on the bottom. The pool also has a big footprint. I just wasn't smart enough 14 years ago to realize the carrying cost of such a pool. That is why I want to rebuild it one day. We'll see if Kalifornia and I last that long...

[red-beard]

David, I'm just trying to get a guage of the gallons. 11 feet deep for 1/2 of it's length. What are the rest of the dimensions. I have a 30,000 gallon pool (40x15) with an average depth of 6 feet, including a 1000 gallon spa. I run my 1 hp pump around 8 hours per day.

[daepp]

IIRC, it's about 40 feet long, and the "deep end" extend beyond half that distance. With is 20 for about 3/5 of the length, then makes a lazy-L and becomes 15 ft wide. I unfortuantely never knew the gallonage.

[scottmandue]

If your house is not insulated do it now... my first house was old and uninsulated, had some stuff blown into the attic and my heating bill was halved.

I need to look into the solar panels, I have a flat roof but a little worried about the weight.

And Mikester... I feel it is ill advised to post "measure my stuff" on this website"

[Rusty Heap]

I guess it simply comes down to your KW usage, and your Utility $ per KW hour fee.


In Seattle Area, we have dirt cheap electricity at 9 cents a kilowatt hour. So for 1000 watts (10 x 100 watt light bulbs), it costs me 9 cents to leave 10 light bulbs on for an hour. Meh, I like to leave my lights on so I don't trip over something. Light = good.

It bugs the sheet out of me as my mom keeps her house in the total dark and turns off light bulbs the instant she leaves a room.


now as a flip coin to that, I have friends in hawaii paying I think 45-50 cents an KW hour. So NO they don't leave air-conditioning on long periods nor use electric hot-water heaters or electric clothes drier.

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by scottmandue

I need to look into the solar panels, I have a flat roof but a little worried about the weight.

I have a flat roof and looked into PV solar panels. They will need to cut thru the roof and tie it into the support structure (mine is beams). They told me it would not show from the inside, but it is not very cost effective to so until I need a new roof. By then, we should have some much improved PV panels.

You can likely get a guy over to check it out and estimate it for free - I did.

Major costs are:

1. panels - by far the most $$
2. supports for panels (higher for a flat roof as they need to angle the panels towards the sun)
3. charge controllers, new reversible meter & tie-in to elec. system
4. labor

Another benefit is that it would shade my roof pretty well in summer, which can get hot here.

Scott R. has panels in Colo. IIRC & red-beard is in a related business (non-residential)

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by mikester

My house is relatively old as well. I have always been unhappy with the state of my electrical wiring. It isn't that there is anything really 'wrong' with it but it's circa 1950s, mostly aluminum (I think) and is poorly organized in the fuse box.

This makes me really want to have the house rewired; that way I could have rooms organized at the box and maybe even separate lighting from outlets. (I'm not an electrician so I don't know if electrical codes would support that sort of thing or not)

I've been looking at the home metering technologies out there and they seem pretty juvenile to me. I am going to start looking for some 'open source' projects to see if anything like that exists out there. It's a hobby/project time thing for me. Some of the things I have been considering is solar tubes in a few rooms where we usually have lights on during the day. Like my office. I want the privacy of my window shades closed but I would love the natural light in the room. I don't know if those tubes also bring in heat though or compromise heating and cooling insulation.

If I could get an snmp addressable energy monitoring device in the fuse box on each circuit I would be pretty much in heaven on the subject.

1950's will not be aluminum. The 'wiring' per se is not the place to spend.

[ckelly78z]

Somewhere, I think it was on a TV show, I saw that they had developed solar crystals that do the same job of photovolteic cells, but at a greatly reduced size, so a panel the size of a compact disc would yeild the same energy output as the 4'x2' panel........I can't wait for that.

[RWebb]

Monocrystalline

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by ckelly78z

Somewhere, I think it was on a TV show, I saw that they had developed solar crystals that do the same job of photovolteic cells, but at a greatly reduced size, so a panel the size of a compact disc would yeild the same energy output as the 4'x2' panel........I can't wait for that.

Nope

[RWebb]

you can get 50% eff. out of some lab cells, so he might have seen a show on that

Let's see... 4x2 = 8 ft2 and @ 15% eff., you could get that down to ~~ 1 ft2 if you had a magic panel with 100% eff. but that is still larger than a CD ---> you'd need some really high magic to put a smackdown on the laws of thermodynamics...

myabe Maxwell's Demon could do it

[biosurfer1]

what if we add a turbo or supercharger to the PV panel

[RWebb]

no, but a gererator would do it easy

[Por_sha911]

Originally Posted by pen15

I am working on the same thing, hot water is my biggest culprit that I didn't think about...I think heat pump, hot water, and clothes dryer are the biggest users.

Water heaters are adjustable. Reduce the temperature (electric wh's have two thermostats) that it keeps the water temp. When you take a shower you can adjust the faucet to get the same temp you always had.
Clothes dryers usually keep running well past what is needed. Mine has a sensor that shuts off when the clothes are dry. I usually set it at "Less Dry" and everything is perfect.
You would be amazed how much you can save by adjusting the thermostat just a few degrees for the heat pump.

[stealthn]

Don't forget they don't really charge you for what you use, they charge you for the guestimate of what you use and it's based on a curve.
I'm hoping with all the big players getting into this space (monitoring) that they will benefit the consumers on the electric cos.

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

Water heaters are adjustable. Reduce the temperature (electric wh's have two thermostats) that it keeps the water temp. When you take a shower you can adjust the faucet to get the same temp you always had.
Clothes dryers usually keep running well past what is needed. Mine has a sensor that shuts off when the clothes are dry. I usually set it at "Less Dry" and everything is perfect.
You would be amazed how much you can save by adjusting the thermostat just a few degrees for the heat pump.

You really only save money on your dishwasher. And you reduce the amount of stored energy, so from a bath/shower perspective you have less 'hot water' available.

I'm very cheap, but I do not turn my water temp down. House temp? Yes. Water? Not for me.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by stealthn

Don't forget they don't really charge you for what you use, they charge you for the guestimate of what you use and it's based on a curve.
I'm hoping with all the big players getting into this space (monitoring) that they will benefit the consumers on the electric cos.

What?

They have a meter in my back yard that tells them precisely how much electricity I used. No guestimate involved.

[KaptKaos]

http://mashable.com/2013/01/09/electronics-can-cost-energy/

See this?