[Greenbuilding] Flattening the Curve

[Richard Garbary]

Paul:

Your total consumption #'s (4 kwh/day)and your demand #'s (1.38 kw) are very
impressive. I wouldn't be too concerned about the standby losses too much
especially if you've mitigated that with a blanket. Those losses, I believe,
are far less than those that are incurred by thermal peaker plants running @
~30% efficiency and pumped storage @ ~80% to power high-demand, on demand
tank and tankless water heaters. This does not include the cost of
financing, building, maintaining, running...or the line losses. Also, the
fact the these standby facilities run only for very brief time periods, some
only hours/ year! Caching the energy (with minimal losses) at the point of
use is the way to go. You could power our homes with "trickle chargers". Why
is it necessary to have a 3kw or 4.5kw or 25 kw element to heat 1 to 10
gallons of water? I wonder what the  "curve" would look like if all tank
water heaters had a 1.5 kw bottom element and DHR.

Richard



========================================================================================================
On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 6:11 PM, Paul Eldridge <
paul.eldridge at ns.sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Hi Richard,
>
> Just to kick the can a little further with respect to electric water
> heaters, I checked the power monitor on our 1.38 kW/115-volt water heater
> and over the past twenty-eight days we've consumed an average of 3.79 kWh
> per day.  That covers off two showers per day, two to three loads of laundry
> per week washed in hot water, and running the dishwasher about every fourth
> day (our washer and dishwasher are both made by Bosch).  To minimize the
> risk of legionella forming at the bottom of the tank, we keep the thermostat
> set at 170°F so our standby losses are a little higher than what they would
> be otherwise.  Be that as it may, at less than 4.0 kWh per day I don't feel
> overly sheepish about using electricity to perform this task, particularly
> when the only other alternatives are oil and propane.
>
> Cheers,
> Paul
>
> | Message: 1
> | Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2011 08:53:03 -0400
> | From: Richard Garbary<richard6 at gmail.com>
> | To: Green Building<greenbuilding at lists.**bioenergylists.org<greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> >
> | Subject: [Greenbuilding] Flattening the Curve - July Numbers
> | Message-ID:
> |       <CALt3TQGH6yR=SPdPoTD4yMxaKv3L**7c_PJdQJQLLAOCh-A+MGjA at mail.**
> gmail.com <SPdPoTD4yMxaKv3L7c_PJdQJQLLAOCh-A%2BMGjA at mail.gmail.com>>
> |Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> |
> |Air conditioning certainly takes a toll. July was brutally hot in Toronto
>
>
>
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