I bought a Current Cost EnviR monitor and installed it 2 days ago. It is on the incoming 230V feed so I see all loads on the house.
First test, I installed it on the emergency panel only. This is a panel that I can flip an interlock breakr to shift from grid to generator in the event of a extended power loss. It has selected lighting, internet/main computer, TV entertainment, 2 freezers and 2 refrigerators on it. Ran a consistent 600-700 watts for 24 hours. That gave me a good baseline.
Then moved it to the mains. Resting power draw is around 800-900 watts. No big parasitic draws beyond the emergency feed.
Now for some interesting numbers -
Geothermal on cooling mode - 4KW. Chart on the unit says I should be pulling 2.8KW. And do not seem to be making much hot water even though it is turned on. My Geo has a spare water heater with the power not connected ans a pre-heater reservoir to feed the primary HW.
Work item 1 - time for a service call to check out the unit power draw, loop efficiency and diagnose the water issue.
DHW - 4.8KW - this gets hit all the time - shower, dishwasher, washer, etc. If I had the DHW from the geo properly preheating the recovery would be a lot better.
Note 1 - DHW spare would be a good candidate for a solar dump heater. Investigate if panels and simple controller (ghurd) could supply 2000 watts of 230V without batteries or inverter...
Stove - 4.8KW with 2 burners on. Infrequent use.
Oven - 4.8kw
Note 2 - investigate load with a oven that also has convection to see if more efficient baking is cost effective (wife hates the oven and wants to upgrade)
Sharp Microwave/Convection oven - MW approx 1.KW, Conv approx 1.2KW
Dryer - 5KW
When the dinner time is on, peak us is really high, going above 10KW and staying there. She starts running the oven and stove, then switches to the combo of DW/DWH and runs a load of laundry... Evening peak is a long, high use span of time. If the standby reservoir was up to temp the overall peak would be shortened.
I tend to leave the garage and basement lights on. They are all cfl/florescent tube and I thought were really efficient. Not true. Combined they run 300W, and left on 24/7 can contribute to $25 of my electric bill.
Work Item 2 - refit with more efficient lighting and rewire for walk lights vs work lights.
I live on a farm so I have a shop and barn. Shop is not used much yet. A Kill-a-watt shows 2KW of use on the shop for the past 4 days. My plan to fit a RV2012 that I saved from my RV I sold looks like a good plan there. I very infrequently use the compressor or welder (inverter type) and they both run well on the generator (that I need to us more to keep it functional). If I need to expand later there are a lot of 24 and 48 volt inverters on ebay that I can upgrade to. Will start out with 2 250W panels, the 12V inverter and a good MPPT charger (Rogue ($350) or Schneider ($500) not sure yet?) so the eventual upgrade is easier.
Work Item 3 - proceed with the initial solar plan
I have minimal lighting needs in the livestock barn. Will leave that on grid. For cold and hot times I run fans and in the cold months, water heaters. During those months they were running 24/7. That cost me $45 a month for half of the year.
Work Item 4 - Use Ranco heat/cool switch and relay to control a power circuit to allow a temperature set point for fans (above say 90 degrees) and water heaters when below freezing. That should cut energy use dramatically.
That is the learning so far. At this point, not seeing much use of solar in the house other than the above mentioned water heater idea.
