vwaudiguy
New Member
If I had demand charges last year it would have added $786 to the year..Yea, but it's not EVERY month, only a couple of peak months when it's really cold and the heat strips are blaring. So maybe $250/year?
If I had demand charges last year it would have added $786 to the year..Yea, but it's not EVERY month, only a couple of peak months when it's really cold and the heat strips are blaring. So maybe $250/year?
This is interesting news to me. I hadn't heard of utilities implementing demand based charges on residential customers. I wonder why this was chosen instead of time-of-use rates. The stated goal of both systems is to minimize the amount of generation capacity that has to be installed for peak demand and only gets used a small percentage of the time.
I am researching new air source heat pumps as well as ground source heat pumps.. also adding 2" of insulation to the exterior of the house while residing it... the plan to attack my high demand comes after the house is performing at its best. The hope is to never need the heating strips.. even with us getting down to -5*FDemand is the Achilles heel of the grid. The very nice thing about Arizona and solar is peak demand on the grid coincides very closely with solar production, as we need juice when the sun is baking the house. Unfortunately if you live in the frozen tundra, and have electric heat, your peak usage shifts to the cold winter nights when their ain't no sun.
Some things you might look into:
Brideidea makes an EV charging box, designed to go inline with a HWH or other appliance to run them both on the same circuit, giving priority to the non-EV device. I have one connected to my clothes dryer (primary) and HWH (secondary) to keep them from bringing demand up. When I scale up my panel another 50A I will probably get rid of it, but I actually don't notice.
If you kick on 15KW of heat strips, there is not a whole lot you can do without a buttload of batteries. With close to 4000 square foot of ranch housing, you are decidedly sub-optimal for efficiency by design as well. I was informed in another thread some heat pumps these days work way below zero, dunno how much cold you are dealing with, but I'd look into it for sure. Some of the power companies offer discounts/have gear that they hook into your HVAC/High load circuits that offer a discount if they can shut it off. There are home control products that can do the same, but they can get a little pricey.
Frankly ~4000 square foot is a lot of house. Not going to be cheap to run it no matter what you do. Probably not an easy way to shutdown portions of the house during high demand either.
I am researching new air source heat pumps as well as ground source heat pumps.. also adding 2" of insulation to the exterior of the house while residing it... the plan to attack my high demand comes after the house is performing at its best. The hope is to never need the heating strips.. even with us getting down to -5*F
I looked for one seven years ago and they were not ready for prime time yet. Sounds like it is time to look again.It's all a very closed loop, efficient system. It makes me happy.
Emporia does a good job tracking 15 minute peak demand.. I wish I could utilize their app for battery discharge peak shaving... but you must use their battery... I do plan to get their EV charger as I really enjoy their vue monitor/appThis is what I thought a few months back, until a friend of mine started complaining. But it's really coming in vogue these days. I think it made its way into some widely-shared pointy-hair boss slide decks in the industry in the past few years and now coming to fruition.
A while back Emporia started targeting peak shaving, and it targets the entry level residential market. They're also based in Colorado, which has residential demand charges :laugh:
They're not bothering with demand charges here in California, but they did add hour-by-hour feed-in bonuses for the new solar tariff. Which is sort of the inverse. And some of the hour slots are insanely high in August/September, when our grid gets walloped pretty heavily in late afternoon/early evening
I like the concept of the utility incentivizing customer feed in when its needed. These incentives would let customers benefit from using small battery systems to help out the grid.t's really coming in vogue these days. I think it made its way into some widely-shared pointy-hair boss slide decks in the industry in the past few years and now coming to fruition.
I do have some experience with an LG heat pump dryer.
Why does it condense and store the water in another compartment?Meaning that I put in wet clothes, and a while later I have dry clothes in one compartment, and the water that was moved out of the clothes in another compartment. It's all a very closed loop, efficient system. It makes me happy.
Doesn't geothermal retain a decent COP at lower temp than A2A? That said, it feels like investing in a system to hand down to your grandkids...Stick with air-to-air. Water-to-air is a neat idea, that never seems to pan out as intended. Yea they were saying like -20C or so for some of the newer heat pumps if memory serves. Pretty amazing, but you ought to be able to get even lower, absolute zero is -270C or something.
Meaning that I put in wet clothes, and a while later I have dry clothes in one compartment, and the water that was moved out of the clothes in another compartment. It's all a very closed loop, efficient system. It makes me happy.
Why does it condense and store the water in another compartment?
Take a look at the GE and LG full sized combos. They've been very hot the past 12-18 months in some circles.I looked for one seven years ago and they were not ready for prime time yet. Sounds like it is time to look again.
Why does it condense and store the water in another compartment?
Doesn’t the built in condensate pump lift it high enough for most situations? Or was it a convenience and not a law of physics thing?As @zanydroid said above, I could directly drain the water from the dryer. It wasn't convenient to drain it by gravity until I could stack the dryer on the washer, and I didn't want a hose running across the floor to the floor drain so I left it configured to catch the water in the compartment that is built into the dryer for that purpose. Now, I use the water from the dryer to water house plants since it has lower mineral content than the tap water.
It was entirely configuration of the drains and layout of the room, and where I was willing to run a hose.Or was it a convenience and not a law of physics thing?
Another notion of "closed loop": a HP dryer is different from a HPWH or ASHP in that it doesn't necessarily cool the air outside. Rather, it recovers a lot of heat from condensing out the water that has been extracted from the clothes.
Got it. I don’t know much about plumbing but I sort of assumed it’s possible to find some kind of Y adapter that can dock with the drain hole and accept both the drain of laundry machine and of the HP dryer.
I started building my addiction a year agoIt's interesting watching the various Power Companies trying to squeeze more money from people who have Solar.
I suspect that at some point when a different administration in power the kids gloves are going to come off and they will enact even more direct policies to punish people who are grid tied.
I am slowly getting myself off the Grid for this very reason. I am now at 3.5Kwh per day from the Grid and using 40KWh total. In summer that will probably go up to the typical 55KWh and I expect grid usage to be at 8-10 KWh.
One more battery and a little more load management would fix the issue but the tiny little Bill just cannot justify buying another battery. Also I believe they are just going to make the penalty a minimum monthly bill that will be outrageous for people who only use a small amount of power.
At my age I get worried about coming off the Grid completely because my wife would be extremely unhappy.
Another thought is looking to upgrade the heat pump to a true cold weather rated heat pump like a Gree Multipro or Mitsubishi hyper heat. I have a Gree Flexx at my house and it has never kicked on aux heat even in -9F ambient weather with -15 to -20 wind chill.Turn off aux heat and set the HPWH to heat pump only mode would go a long way here. You could get a williams direct vent wall furnace to use instead of the aux.