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Old 07-25-11, 12:21 PM   #41
Daox
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I just got through my first billing cycle with the new hot water heater installed. I'll say right off the bat that I'm very happy with the purchase. During winter, the water was just warm enough for shower taking. Now that its hot out, its plenty warm as I find myself taking cold showers to cool off.

But, the point of this thread is to get a snapshot of power usage and see how things were affected. Below is my spreadsheet I use to track my energy usage (sorry, still no tracker on the site). As you can see, weather wise it was pretty similar to last year this time. I've had to run the window A/C unit a handful of times in our bedroom for sleeping, but during the day we use fans to stay cool. The biggest difference you'll see is the drop from 15 therms of gas to 1 therm of gas. This may not sound like much, but 1 therm = 29.3 kWh of electricity. So, those 15 therms are really more like 440 kWh! That means that the 1 therm I used this July is used for cooking and clothes drying. That leaves 14 therms (410 kWh) for hot water. Considering I only used 330 kWh this July I think it is a HUGE improvement. Of course, I have done a few things since then to decrease electricity usage and I'm sure that helped keeping the electricity usage down. However, the main point here is the green highlighted cells. My total energy usage HALFED from going to this water heater!

EDIT: I know why my electric usage is so low now. Last year at this time had my basement dehumidifier going and this year I did not, I'm sure that has a lot to do with things. Next month will be better compairison. I'm guessing my kWhs will jump to the mid 500s based on the TED info I've been looking at lately. Still a far cry from the 750 kWh combined gas/electric energy usage.


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Last edited by Daox; 07-25-11 at 12:28 PM..
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Old 07-25-11, 12:35 PM   #42
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Am I reading that right you're averaging 12 kwh/day for 100% of your household energy use in july? very impressive.

I averaged 20.81/day for june/july with no AC/heating/dehumidifier. According to my current sensors/spreadsheets 9 of that goes towards heating hotwater. I really have to ditch the hot water tank soon and get that solar hotwater built/installed...
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Old 07-25-11, 01:09 PM   #43
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Yep, it seems that way. Its just me and my wife in the house, and we both work. So, during the day its just the base load of the house (~3kWh/day).

Its definitely going to get worse next month with the dehumidifier going. I've seen a few days where I'm above 20 kWh a day up to about 24 kWh/day. But, I also have a bunch in the mid teens too. Last month I was also more aware of my hot water usage. I've become a bit more relaxed with it lately.

I would really love to have a kill a watt meter on the water heater though. It would be great to know exactly how much power is going to heat the water. I agree it really is good motivation for getting the SHW put in!

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