[Greenbuilding] Commercial Water Heaters

[Richard Garbary]

 Paul:

 Awesome hack! It's too bad the ability to  de-rate wasn't a built-in
 feature. Yesterday, I took out the timer for our 60 gallon Rheem and
 replaced it with a digital touch screen dimmer. I've set it for 25%
 meaning bottom element is 94 watts and the top 188 watts (fast
 recovery!), for a max consumption of 4.5 kwh per day. In the summer,
 4.5 kwh usage is about right. I may need to adjust accordingly. I'll
 post some new charts over the next few days. The spreadsheet gives the
 % output and corresponding kw numbers.

 http://flatteningthecurve.wordpress.com/

Here's a link you may find of interest:

http://people.cs.umass.edu/~irwin/smartcap.pdf

Richard