So we’ve been in the house for about a month now and have had a chance to look at the solar….
The highest daily usage was just over 28 kWhr, with an average of daily consumption of 21 kWhr, much lower than the loadlist and that’s even with the addition of the heat pump hot water and electric oven use (since the gas oven is not working). And the Reclaim water heater is using around 3.3 – 3.6kWhr.
A low use day – the heated floor is off and we’re trying using the RCAC. It’s using around 5.5 kW, instead of the rated 4.8 kW according to SMA.
A high use day where we trialed the RCAC and used the oven.
For the time the RCAC was on, we averaged 3.4kW, but the average when it was turned off was 1 kW, so it looks like the RCAC uses around 2.5 kWhr per hour. Around 50% of rated power, even though it seems to be pulling more than rated for some odd reason.
So what’s different? Why are we using less than forecast?
We’re not really using the dryer – bought a good clothes drying rack, and the daughter now uses it instead. We’ve used it twice, and it only uses about a kW, so not too bad for emergency use. Drying in front of the wood heater is almost as fast.
The Neo 2.5 wood heater has an optional blower that doesn’t use much power – it’s rated at 57W (much lower than I assumed a wood heater would be), and typically we only run it on low speed coz it’s a bit noisy and low is fine.
The house is really light, so lights not on during the day, and only occupied rooms at nights. Outside LEDs provide enough light. So lighting overestimate.
Entertainment gear is not using as much as forecast and is being used less than forecast.
No need for mobile signal booster, although two range extenders added, and left on 24/7.
The updated load list below roughly matches our use, but I haven’t included a bit of oven and RCAC use. And we weren’t there for a couple of nights. But when we’ve had a run of bad weather, I have turned the electric floor off. It’s my swing load.
The ensuite is the only room in the house that gets really cold (large fully tiled room) and the electric floor makes all the difference – there seems to be enough stored heat that if we skip a day the room is still not too bad. If the batteries don’t get fully charged, and/or the forecast is bad, I turn it off for the day. We’ve decided its a better use of power than 20 minutes on the RCAC.
Of course on a good day, we can run the RCAC without an issue – we just don’t do it because the Neo keeps the house warm enough that we don’t need to. And it stays alight overnight, so easy to stoke in the morning.
Roughly updated list…
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