Quote:
Originally Posted by ecomodded
Strider:
most of that electric usage your current house uses could be eliminated, through alternative measures such as Solar heat panels , heavy insulation, de-tune the heat pump to lessen its electrical requirements or since 15,000 watts is a ridiculous amount of surge, it could be replaced with a small new 1000w heat pump.
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My house already has excellent solar exposure. It gains heat quite well when it's sunny in the winters. I'm not far from you it's not often sunny in the winter though. Adding solar air heating would be a fun project but it's not high on my list as I don't expect it to make a huge difference in my power bill.
My main source of heating is from the woodstove. between it's fan and the furnace fan on circulate I use between 2 and 4 kwh/day. 4 kwh if I leave the fan on circulate the entire day. 2 if I turn it off entirely during the day. On circulate mode it runs for 20 minutes every hour.
I would like to add solar water heating. It's costing me between 4 and 8 kwh/day right now. The major issue is solar hotwater and solar air heating technically requires CSA approved components and collectors in BC. To do it legally you need a permit, to get the permit you need expensive overpriced commercial components. I figure I can build a system that will provide almost 100% of my water heating and have some left over for space heating in the shoulder months for less then $2k if I do it without permit. It'll be closer to $10k to do it with commercial everything.
I believe the 15kw is from an electric heater heating the fluid before it gets pumped outside to deice the collectors. I have my doubts that a 1000watt heat pump would be enough to heat my house. It's a typical 2 story bc box.
The attic is at R60. The walls however suck insulation wise. Short of wrapping the entire house with 3" of rigid there is little that can easily be done to improve that. The windows are already pretty good and now that I've corrected the install issues it's not bad.
My yearly electric consumption for a 100% all electric house was 9671 kwh costing me $833.37 last year. I'm already far better then most households but my goal is to get that close to 8500kwh in the next 12 months.
If I go with solar hotwater I expect that I can get down close to 6000 kwh. ROI is starting to become a question on improvements though. Even saving 25% on my entire bill is now only saving me a little over $200 a year. It's nice but probably not worth a $10,000 investment.