by watchdogtimer on 10/26/22, 9:23 AM with 185 comments
by MichaelCollins on 10/26/22, 7:50 PM
by alex3305 on 10/26/22, 5:51 PM
Simply put I've set it up that during electricity peak times the boiler doesn't try to heat water to save on electricity costs. Heating water is all done in the off peak hours with some easy calculations. Also I tend to set my boiler to a lower temperature (ie. 58 degrees) during weekdays and higher (60+) during weekends or holidays. That way I always have hot water and get rid of legionella growth.
What I can see I'm using about 1.5 - 2kWh a day for keep 100 liters of water at at least 55 degrees. While the manufacturer of the water heater says the device should use between 7 and 9kWh a day. I really would like to optimize it any further, but it seems that I've hit a wall.
by graeber_28927 on 10/26/22, 11:07 AM
I have a docker instance of it running on an Ubuntu server at home, and I bougth a few pre-flashed Tasmota electricity meter plugs from Delock. I added another docker container for mosquitto (MQTT) which reads the plugs and integrates into HA. This way I learnt my NAS eats as much electricity a day, as does playing Horizon Zero Dawn on my PC for an hour. Ikea Smart lights on half the brighness are basically non-consuming, and the router is best kept shut down when we're not home for a week or two.
In the end, small household appliances don't make as big a difference, as letting your car charge with solar when electricity is cheap, and reducing charge speed when electricity is expensive (which is also doable with HA). There were great threads in HN about how you can even save energy by heating up or cooling down your house in advance with cheap electricity during the day when demand is low, and turn down the heat/ac in the night when demand is high, thus storing energy in the form of heat. But as a junior programmer with a wife in an already expensive apartment, small savings add up. We realized that running the washing machine less often but fully loaded, and with the lowest temperature water, saves us approximately the cost of Netflix. Few people know it's even fine to wash clothes with cold water.
Ultimately though, our apartment is pretty well insulated, and I would do all the home automation that I have just for the fun of learning. I definitely spent more money (and time) on the server and smart things than what they save us in our bills. Although I hope to apply my knowledge soon at my parents' house, where there's a lot more potential in energy savings.
by fho on 10/26/22, 11:37 AM
Seems like a no-brainer once you think about it ... in the worst case of a flow heater you bring up the water to temperature, let it flow over your body and dump it with most of the heat you put into it.
Systems like the one liked above improve on that by recovering some of the energy. I don't know what the "official" way of installing this system is, but I would just put it in the cold water path and have a thermostat controlled faucet to "switch" to the now-warmer-water gradually.
by giantg2 on 10/26/22, 2:03 PM
Short of getting a newer heat pump, nothing I do will impact my bill in any significant way. I already do most of the smaller stuff.
by joezydeco on 10/26/22, 5:26 PM
The ability to do this kind of thing has been around a long time.
by gorbypark on 10/26/22, 7:33 PM
by Techbotch on 10/26/22, 12:42 PM
by Nextgrid on 10/26/22, 10:01 PM
These "tips" are good, but target the wrong market. Those who have the resources and/or knowledge to implement them are either already doing it, live in a well-insulated property, or make enough to not care about the bill in practice. Those who are actually affected badly by the recent energy crisis have neither the resources to implement these, nor will it make enough of a difference to their situation anyway.
The main problem here is that the government has completely failed its citizens by letting the situation get to a state where a significant proportion of the population is considered to be in "fuel poverty".
Blaming the Russia/Ukraine war is a convenient scapegoat but isn't the answer either. Being forever dependent on foreign energy is a major failure for the government, and even now, I'm not seeing anything being done about it. Most short-term energy subsidies won't address the problem (they may solve this problem, but won't prepare us for the next crisis - not to mention that personal energy subsidies do little when you still have to pay businesses' energy prices in the form of increased costs of goods).
There solutions IMO would be:
* massive subsidies on insulation. UK building standards are shocking by European standards, but the good thing about it is that incremental improvements are both possible (no need to demolish the building) and don't require scarce materials so no supply chain concerns there, merely money concerns the government can subsidize
* solar subsidies, and actually making feed-in tariffs competitive to encourage people to invest in it. This would reduce our energy dependency during the day (which conveniently is when the demand is the highest).
Government borrowing for the above points makes sense because it can and will be paid back down the line (solar lasts 10+ years and efficiency decreases gradually, so you'll get something out of it even 30 years later), unlike stupidly subsidizing people's energy bills without addressing the root cause which will be a one-off expense with no expected return.
by mnw21cam on 10/26/22, 10:53 AM
by bombolo on 10/26/22, 11:02 AM
https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2022/09/02/news/gas_pasta_...
by fiat_fandango on 10/26/22, 2:52 PM
However, the hardest thing to do when figuring out what uses / wastes electricity in your home is establishing a baseline with the most appliances / systems turned off as possible.
My apt is well insulated, but for me it's still crazy (even packing the fridge with as much thermal mass as possible), and furnace / AC turned off at the breaker my apt still uses around 8KWH per day. Water heaters and refrigerators have a long way to go! Curiously, leaving my AC / furnace completely off or on at about 80% cooling a 20F delta uses very little power, exciting how efficient modern climate control is :).
by Animatronio on 10/26/22, 1:58 PM
by turtlebits on 10/26/22, 2:30 PM
by green-salt on 10/26/22, 5:44 PM
by casion on 10/26/22, 12:40 PM
by IshKebab on 10/26/22, 11:49 AM
by poulpy123 on 10/26/22, 1:46 PM
by nottorp on 10/26/22, 7:53 PM
Most heating systems where I am have one...
by elif on 10/26/22, 3:09 PM
so far i haven't noticed any difference, but i think that's the point.
by jessaustin on 10/26/22, 2:24 PM