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Georgen Guru Joined: 13/09/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 462
Posted: 01:05pm 10 Apr 2017
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Decided to mention few ideas on how to use more solar power produced by our own system.
If solar system can only produce 1000W, any device above that wattage uses already more power available.
Here staggered use of appliances is the only way to maximise usage of our own power.
If system can produce 2000W, 3000W, 5000W or more, we can use few appliances at the same time.
It is the numbers game. Problem is washing machine, that we have to be home to take washing out.
Same with vacuum cleaner.
On the down side it is time consuming. Here we have to make choice is it better to wait your turn, or to pay for grid power.
Reminds me single toilet or bathroom for family of 4 or 6.George
Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498
Posted: 03:57pm 10 Apr 2017
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I take you are talking about a grid tie system without batteries.
My system is off grid with a large battery bank, the only thing I don't use at night is the AC. We often use the oven at night and the washing machine is nearly always run with delay start so it is finished before there is any significant solar production. It is front loader with a heater and uses approximately 2 KWH per load.
Most days the 7.5kw PV bank produces way more than we consume except when using AC
There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Georgen Guru Joined: 13/09/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 462
Posted: 08:14pm 10 Apr 2017
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Yes I am talking about grid tie system.
Biggest problem is that household uses power well after sunset. We could burn oil lamps, not watch TV and use gas to cook meals after sunset.
Probably good idea in case of emergency, but going there without unexpected circumstances looks unconvincing to me.
George
Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498
Posted: 08:35pm 10 Apr 2017
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Or you could add batteries.There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Georgen Guru Joined: 13/09/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 462
Posted: 09:36pm 10 Apr 2017
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Point is that Yahoo2 made comment in another thread, that with bit of cunning you can use up to 70% of power produced by grid connected system without storage system.
He also mentioned that usually people only use 25%, with bit of effort it can go up to 50%.
This post is to share ideas on what to do, to use more of what grid system produces without additional investments.George
Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498
Posted: 10:14pm 10 Apr 2017
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Sorry you did not say that.There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
davef Guru Joined: 14/05/2006 Location: New ZealandPosts: 499
Posted: 09:19am 13 Apr 2017
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Madness,
Curious why you use stored power to run the dryer before the sun gets up.
Dave
Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498
Posted: 10:48am 13 Apr 2017
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Because I am mad
What I actually said was the washing machine, it takes a couple hours to do a full wash cycle. (yes there are shorter ones but they don't wash properly, ask my wife) So by starting it early, it has the washing done ready to hang up before we go to work. There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 02:52pm 13 Apr 2017
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My own belief is that the very first step is to monitor every single appliance and determine power consumption and usage, and use that as a knowledge base to make some cunning changes here and there that minimize overall power consumption.
There are some real surprises in store for anyone that does this, and the improvements can be spectacular for only a very minimal cash outlay.
In my own case I was able to better than halve my monthly consumption by doing a few sneaky things. I am grid connected, but during the day am almost totally solar, but at night I draw grid power or whenever solar cannot carry extreme load peaks during the day. As others have already said, a system like this can reduce grid power by typically about roughly 2/3. Its a minimalist system without an expensive battery.
Doing any better than that is very difficult as it would involve some pretty extreme changes to living habits, which are just not worth the trouble.
Next step will be to add a Lithium battery which will provide power at night which is when the system I have right now just totally stops working. How I reduced my power by half:
Replaced 30 year old refrigerator with 1 year old model (e-bay) Replaced washing machine with F&P washing machine (e-bay). Replaced CRT computer monitor with LCD computer monitor (e-bay). These were the real power hogs, but not the only ones.
Replaced 240v electric wall clocks with battery wall clocks. Fitted time switch to Lap top power supply so it only runs for 15 minutes per day. Replaced fluorescent and incandescent lights with LED lights. Use gas stove to boil water instead of electric jug. (Its actually faster). Learn to turn things off at the power point, as many things still draw considerable power even when switched off.
And a couple of interesting ones. My garage door opener uses a 24 volt dc motor that draws ten amps. It is powered from a transformer that is always running and runs very warm. That draws 22 watts continuously 24 hours per day. If I switch it off at the power point, obviously the remote radio control no longer works.
So what I did was power just the radio receiver part from a small plug pack. When I push the remote button from within my car, that closes a relay that provides 240 volts to the big transformer. Works the same as it always did, but now the standby power is almost unmeasurable.
The last thing I am doing right now is a bit more radical. I have hooked up a Rinnai gas space heater to a tumble dryer, so it no longer needs to run a 2Kw heating element to dry clothes. Still working on this right now, and it looks very promising. The Rinnai heater cost $45 and the tumble dryer $50 (e-bay) not much, but the electrical power saved is huge. Cheers, Tony.
Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904
Posted: 12:14am 14 Apr 2017
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There is another way that can operate your garage door even if the mains power is down.
I have a home made remote control garage door opener that uses 12v motors (operates garage & front gate). All this is powered from a small, motorcycle size 12V battery. The battery gets charged from a plug pack which in turn gets powered from solar via my inverter.
No reason why two 12 V batteries could not run a 24V garage door.Klaus
davef Guru Joined: 14/05/2006 Location: New ZealandPosts: 499
Posted: 10:43am 14 Apr 2017
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Madness,
Just wondering if there was a technical reason :)
Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 814
Posted: 01:31pm 14 Apr 2017
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Worthwhile checking inregards to electric roller doors (and tilt a doors) is many models actually include provision for a backup battery from the factory, look under the cover and check, it usually has it marked as backup 12v or whatever
Most of the ones I checked had it, and most were only 12v (usually marked on the motor itself) or on the pcb
Considering the usual low draw time, I dare say you could get away with an old car battery on its own smallish panel
(I know about this feature because my mum's one had it, and as she lived in a country town, the power was less than reliable, so I hooked up an old car battery charged by a small 12vdc plugpack charger to it so she could continue to use the remote regardless of power being on or not)
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 02:03pm 14 Apr 2017
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That is brilliant guys, never thought of doing it that way.
That is the power of the internet Forums. One person comes up with an idea and it triggers even better solutions from others.
A 12v or 24v battery would only need a trickle charge to keep it fully charged and would completely do away with the need for the large incredibly wasteful transformer.
In all my data logging and usage monitoring, one thing really stood out.
Its not the high power loads that only run for a minute or two that consume most of the power. Thinks like electric Kettles, microwaves, and power tools are certainly heavy loads, but are not on for long enough to be really significant in watt hours.
What is really bleeding you dry are the 10 watt and 25 watt loads that run 24 hours per day. And those are often the things it is often the simplest to do something about.
Its amazing that many people say its far too expensive to spend $200 dollars replacing an old inefficient refrigerator with a more modern more efficient refrigerator. But will readily throw $1,000 into adding extra amp hours into a battery to support that older refrigerator throughout a long winters night.
Cheers, Tony.
Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498
Posted: 04:29pm 14 Apr 2017
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I run my electric gate off of a 10W panel with 180ah golf cart battery, this was easier than running power to it.There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 814
Posted: 08:47pm 14 Apr 2017
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I dont even know the brand my mum had, but many people have B&D doors, and a quick sqiz at the instruction manual seems to support them from the factory supporting external power or its own internal battery and charger circuit can be fitted
Without the charger/battery backup board fitted you would need for the B&D at least to make up a patch cord (I think), but for their electric gate controller it just needs the + & - from a 24v battery (edit further down it does specify 24v, not 12v)
Whatever mums was (yellow box, red push button, brand unknown) it just had 4 screw connectors under the light cover, 2 went to a backup battery, the other 2 could be connected to a external push button switch to trigger door opening/closing from inside the garage without needing to reach the controller (quite difficult on some boxes due to height or car parked in the way)- the good oldfashioned black doorbell switch was perfectEdited by Boppa 2017-04-16
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 09:14pm 14 Apr 2017
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Yup, lots of possibilities for improvement here guys.
But my power audit put my roller door firmly into the "bad guy" category for very high standby power consumption, and something had to be done about that.
There were some other evil appliances, like a Lap Top that I very rarely use, but the constantly connected charger consumed 17 watts even with a fully charged battery. And that beastly charger thing was plugged into the mains 24 hours per day.
Easy solution, plug it in through an electronic timer programmed to turn on the Lap Top charger for only 15 minutes each 24 hours.
The trick is to first identify the energy sapping vampires, then work out some fairly simple solutions. Nothing really changes to your usage patterns or convenience, only your power bills get much smaller.
In rough round numbers, my power consumption in Kwh per month is about half or slightly less than it was over the past several years before I got really serious. Payback period for all my new (secondhand e-bay) appliances worked out to about 2-3 years.
About roughly 2/3 of that half power consumption is now provided by solar. So real solar contribution is closer to 85% than 66% of what it was originally.
Getting it down to zero will now require only half the installed battery capacity that it would have needed if I had not bothered to be a mean miserable scrooge with Kwh. Cheers, Tony.
Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 814
Posted: 10:00pm 14 Apr 2017
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Another one is wired smoke alarms, the ones I had at my old house drew 7w per alarm (2 downstairs, 3 upstairs) 10w constantly from a cordless phone that was barely ever used, rising to 24w when charging the phone from flat same with vcr (again rarely used these days) drew almost 30w constantly when on standby, rising to 80w when on Big plasma TV used about 10w on standby, rising to 600w when on, now replaced with led thats 4" bigger, yet only uses 210w when on house burglar alarm was 10w, 2x rollerdoors were close to 50w
computer powerboard that used to be on 24/7 (GPO behind desk so awkward to turn off) had about 6 plugpacks running 24/7- monitor,injet printer, scanner, 2 for the speakers (desktop and subwoofer) used to pull around 80w combined when everything was turned `off'
microwave pulls 20w constantly to run clock etc
(I bought a new washing machine and got a plugin `KW hr tester' for free while living there and went around checking everything in the house lol)
I was actually surprised just how much I was using with everything on standbye etc- it was equivalent to leaving a 150w portaflood running 24/7 plus a bit more
Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498
Posted: 10:28pm 14 Apr 2017
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Don't be tempted to remove or disconnect wired in smoke alarms as they are now a legal requirement in many places and if something went wrong you could be in deep s#it.There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 814
Posted: 10:33pm 14 Apr 2017
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Certainly I wasnt suggesting such, thats a bad idea indeed (it might be a factor in the selection of them tho)
Mums saved her place one time, power went off at dinnertime, thought she had turned everything off, power came on about midnight, about 3am, alarms went off- oven was still on and pork crackling had caught fire inside oven
edit to add)Whats the go with them in offgrid houses? Bit awkward having 240v wired alarms when the 240v isnt always there.... Edited by Boppa 2017-04-16
Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 10:41pm 14 Apr 2017
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Many appliances have small transformers that run quite warm and draw continuous power even when the device is switched off. Pulling out the plug, or fitting a timer may be possible.
Alternatively one of the new cold running switching power supply wall packs can possibly supply whatever low voltage dc power is required far more efficiently than a transformer. This may be one possible approach for smoke alarms.
Boppa is quite right, the more you look, the more you will discover. The power savings are not trivial, often its easy to reduce power to 1/4 or 1/10 or even less by doing something fairly simple, and it all adds up.
Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me.
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