Share Your Home Electrification/Efficiency Improvements

[Oilpan4]

I prefer the off setting.
It's just like my leaf. Saving a trip, combining a trips, planning ahead saves more power than using B mode, cruise control, etc and it keeps run time hours off my machinery.
If you want to "save energy" by running your gear 24/7 by all means be my guest.
If I can leave my machine off for 12 to 18 hours a day I'm going to do that.

[Oilpan4]

Eventually, as more users realize that maximizing late night/early morning usage actually helps the "grid" and as a result, they are able to save usage during the peak afternoons, that less "peaker" energy (think very expensive) is required - at least here in the ERCOT system which is likely similar to most grid systems.

We've been doing this for 20 years: greatly reducing our grid consumption during peak loads (hot weather here) and doing more cooling in the morning and late at night. I remember poring through the regional ISO logs about 20 years ago, to get a feel for when local demand was highest and lowest, because they never made (or make) any effort to inform consumers about this issue.

Yeah during the hottest part of the day, peak grid time I'm at work. No reason to A/C an empty house while I'm at work for 13 hours.
I'm with you, run that A/C in the evening.

[SageBrush]

Eventually, as more users realize that maximizing late night/early morning usage actually helps the "grid" and as a result, they are able to save usage during the peak afternoons, that less "peaker" energy (think very expensive) is required - at least here in the ERCOT system which is likely similar to most grid systems.

We've been doing this for 20 years: greatly reducing our grid consumption during peak loads (hot weather here) and doing more cooling in the morning and late at night. I remember poring through the regional ISO logs about 20 years ago, to get a feel for when local demand was highest and lowest, because they never made (or make) any effort to inform consumers about this issue.

Yeah during the hottest part of the day, peak grid time I'm at work. No reason to A/C an empty house while I'm at work for 13 hours.
I'm with you, run that A/C in the evening.

.
Read again; that is not what Leftie is saying
You should get a clue about home conditioning. They heat up (or cool down) regardless of whether you are at home. Time shifting conditioning is affected by Newton's law of heating/cooling but the more important factor is the machine load efficiency curve. Your behavior is the poster child of how NOT to use a heat pump.

[Oilpan4]

I'm going to leave it off.
If air conditioning an empty house all day makes you feel more Al gore like, go for it.

[SageBrush]

I'm going to leave it off.

Of course you are...until you turn it on full blast and then run it inefficiently. And you will continue to whine that heat pump use is expensive, never knowing that your ignorant behavior is the problem.

Trumper

[LeftieBiker]

I'm going to leave it off.
If air conditioning an empty house all day makes you feel more Al gore like, go for it.

You already know that the heat pump works best when it's nearly loafing, so unless you have a very under-insulated house that heats up very quickly to ambient in the daytime, it makes more sense to do what we do: set the thermostat higher rather than turn it off. If you set it to 78F then the HP doesn't need to work as hard to get it cooled. I think you mentioned having to replace a unit that was basically worn out after 10 years; that was probably in part because of the frequent heavy loads you create...

[Oilpan4]

Actually I don't know how old it was. 10 years was a guess as the manufacturer serial tag was weathered away.
I removed the split today and found the stucco was pushed in around the lines coming through the house.
Well last year I was talking to my neighbor about when the roof got put on and when it got the last coat of stucco and he said it was done at least 15 years ago.
So the split was put in before the house was stuccoed "at least 15 years ago" as of last year.
I moved in there late 2017 and cut that tree down 2 weeks ago.

It likely wore out because it was around 15 years old, had been oversized for the application and when I cut the huge 63 year old rotten tree down that was providing shade to the split and that whole part of the house it was already going out and that finished it off.

When the central heat pump was blowing up my power bill 2 years ago during the winter, back before I got the coal furnace I was leaving it running all the time as it was the only source of heat.
So what's your excuse now smart guy?

[LeftieBiker]

So you haven't lived there long, and you know that the 15+ year old heatpump unit was dying. While it obviously wasn't you that overworked it (if that happened) it apparently wasn't something that you (or I) can diagnose, either, as you didn't live there for most of the unit's life. Is that correct? Getting back to the central point: just try setting the thermostat to 78 in the daytime. If nothing else your fridge will thank you.

[Oilpan4]

The split is a 18,000btu unit covering less than 400 square feet.
Normally 18,000 btu units are used on double that square footage. So it was never over worked, just over cycled.
The inverter split won't cycle on and off like the old fixed speed unit. It should be able to throttle down to about 6,000btu and run nice and easy.
I would have to say that part of the house is well enough insulated. I stuck an inefficient 2 year old barely used 8,000btu window air conditioner in there now and it doesn't have any trouble keeping the space nice and cool.

My central A/C has been off since Wednesday afternoon. There's no way running it for the last 2 days would have "saved electricity" or helped it last longer.
That's normal for me to leave it off for up to 2 or 3 days at a time in summer.
I will probably run the centeral some this weekend.

Last time I checked my refrigerator with a Kill-a-watt plug in meter it used about 2.5kwh a day. If it's 10 degrees hotter inside the fridge might use 2.6kwh. While it would take dozens Kwhs of air conditioning to cool off the house to save maybe a few hundred watt hours on the refrigerator....
I found the fridge used about the same amount of power in the winter (2.1kwh) or summer (2.5kwh) and that is probably mostly due to opening the freezer and fridge a lot more in the summer. The house is around 20 degrees cooler in the winter and I turn the ice maker off in the fall and don't turn it back on till it warms up.

I found that the people telling us to run our air conditioner all the time are almost always the same people trying to sell new ones or service our broken ones.

[LeftieBiker]

The assumption has been, based on your own description, that you were turning the A/C off when it was hot outside. Now I remember why I filter you.