ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
Man, lighting and fans should only be sippin leccy. For me that's not even on the radar.
What is so hard to understand about Do laundry during the day!!
- Thread starter Nobodybusiness
- Start date
Man, lighting and fans should only be sippin leccy. For me that's not even on the radar.
Mine usually will do 1 load a day. If it is cloudy she try's not to do any but some times does any way. I started out with 3 eg4 batteries but now have 9 and seems to be enough not to be bothered with that concern any where she is using. You may look into a propane gas dryer. They consume very little gas to run and would take very little electric. That's what I done and is working great. Every thing I could convert to gas, I have done and that really helps stretch out the life of the batteries over the days with out much sun.
Nobodybusiness
Collecting the leftovers of the Great Sky Reactor.
Thats funny because it did remind me of this skit..
Nobodybusiness
Collecting the leftovers of the Great Sky Reactor.
My objective is to be beholden to no one.
If I use Propane or NG then I have another utility or vendor or tank to contend with.
All electric house.
From February to November I am fine.
It’s December and sometimes first part of January that are the issue.
I have the battery just not enough panels yet.
You would think a 30kw array would be big enough but evidently not.
Sense I bought my own tank and I decide when it gets filled is no different that you buying your own inverter or deciding when you going too buy more fuel to run it such as batteries or panels, In that sense I'm not beholden to any one either.
Nobodybusiness
Collecting the leftovers of the Great Sky Reactor.
If you have to ask someone to come fill the tank then that’s the problem.
That is relying on someone else.
Won’t do it..
No mom and pop Propane delivery here.
Quality oil is only one and they charge a premium for demand delivery.
sunshine_eggo
Happy Breffast!
I agree on lights as everything is LED, but ceiling fans are about 60-80W, and four of them make up about 7kWh/day as they never get turned off.
Tulex
Solar Wizard
Can't agree on this. I also own my tank. Runs only my oven, and backup generator if I ever hook it back up. Lasts me over a year. Last time I had it filled, it was a dollar more per gallon than the previous time.
Sun is going to shine. Cost me the same every day. Nothing saying what the price of propane will be tomorrow, and that's assuming it's available.
Bottom line, I don't have to buy more battery or panels, they don't disappear. I do have to replace the propane though.
When do you plan to get it? Anxious to hear your review! Seems like a promising unit to target
Probably this summer. We have been getting stuff the last few months the wife wanted since I blew so much on solar stuff last year
Well that and Christmas....
Great then it starts at 10 minutes to four and sits overnight full of water. If it is digital it may forget what it was doing just to get restarted at 10 minutes to four again....
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
While this thread is more about relationships than it is about washing clothes, I may as well share some data.
While my wife does try to do her washing during the day (we both do the washing), she will sometimes have the dryer going into the evening.
My wife at least does know the general principle to run things in the daytime but if she "needs" to do a wash, she will.
Our washing machine and dryer combined use less than 30 kWh/month typically. Washing machine heats its own water, so it pulls ~ 2.2 kW when doing that, dryer is a heat pump unit and so is good with power, draws up to ~ 900-1000 W before tailing off. Clothes are often hung out to dry but that's weather dependent. For some items my wife prefers the dryer over the clothes line.
Here's the month of October 2023 showing when our dishwasher, washing machine and clothes dryer operated:
This is a close up look at the laundry power consumption one day in November, chosen because of the unusual daytime and evening operation:
Can see the dryer takes a while but we are OK with that. Auto sensing heat pump/condenser, it generates little waste heat and the condensation is plumbed to the laundry drain which is nice as humidity is an issue here.
I have home automations which send alerts to our devices when a load has finished.
I am usually less concerned about using the dryer in the evening if it's needed but I would really prefer we don't use the washing machine at night. It's simply a matter of power draw limitations and avoiding concurrent peak loads. If it were only our home only then no big issue as we can manage that but we also supply power to a second dwelling and they often use the oven or electric stove in the evening, so the power budget gets eaten up pretty quickly.
Most of the time though our laundry is done during the daytime.
While my wife does try to do her washing during the day (we both do the washing), she will sometimes have the dryer going into the evening.
My wife at least does know the general principle to run things in the daytime but if she "needs" to do a wash, she will.
Our washing machine and dryer combined use less than 30 kWh/month typically. Washing machine heats its own water, so it pulls ~ 2.2 kW when doing that, dryer is a heat pump unit and so is good with power, draws up to ~ 900-1000 W before tailing off. Clothes are often hung out to dry but that's weather dependent. For some items my wife prefers the dryer over the clothes line.
Here's the month of October 2023 showing when our dishwasher, washing machine and clothes dryer operated:
This is a close up look at the laundry power consumption one day in November, chosen because of the unusual daytime and evening operation:
Can see the dryer takes a while but we are OK with that. Auto sensing heat pump/condenser, it generates little waste heat and the condensation is plumbed to the laundry drain which is nice as humidity is an issue here.
I have home automations which send alerts to our devices when a load has finished.
I am usually less concerned about using the dryer in the evening if it's needed but I would really prefer we don't use the washing machine at night. It's simply a matter of power draw limitations and avoiding concurrent peak loads. If it were only our home only then no big issue as we can manage that but we also supply power to a second dwelling and they often use the oven or electric stove in the evening, so the power budget gets eaten up pretty quickly.
Most of the time though our laundry is done during the daytime.
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
If you use a power monitoring smart switch coupled with home automation, then it can be set to allow a running load to finish but not permit a new one to start after a certain time.
Maybe the first couple of times.
wiseacre
Solar Addict
Thinking about it I've come to the conclusion that it would be best to start the wash and hopefully the good lady will finish.
You might have to finish it yourself so the trick is not to do it right
or you'll be stuck doing it until the night wash cycle seems like a good idea.
You might have to finish it yourself so the trick is not to do it right
or you'll be stuck doing it until the night wash cycle seems like a good idea.
solarenvy
Solar Enthusiast
Automation and/or scheduled access during prime hours.
1 - add a digital sign or light on the appliance that gently reminds the user to set good habits. It can correspond with desired time or be automated to reflect sunrise/sunset, weather, SOC, etc.
2 - Turn the circuit off when use is not desirable. There are expensive and cheap(er) ways to do this. One cheaper option:
Enbrighten Z-Wave Plus 40-Amp Indoor/Outdoor Smart Switch:
https://a.co/d/eszD3JQ
1 - add a digital sign or light on the appliance that gently reminds the user to set good habits. It can correspond with desired time or be automated to reflect sunrise/sunset, weather, SOC, etc.
2 - Turn the circuit off when use is not desirable. There are expensive and cheap(er) ways to do this. One cheaper option:
Enbrighten Z-Wave Plus 40-Amp Indoor/Outdoor Smart Switch:
https://a.co/d/eszD3JQ
teal95
Solar Enthusiast
I have 20 kW of panels and all it's run since I powered it up 2 weeks ago is our pond aerator. It did finally manage to get the 30 kWh battery charged at the very end of the day yesterday, and again today. Maybe tomorrow we'll have enough sun I can power something in the house.
Samsonite801
Solar Wizard
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- Oct 15, 2020
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(For anyone it may concern)
If there's ever a disruption in your service, is your wife the type that might respond with: “ See this Solar doesn’t work” ?
This is the challenge here (we always like a good challenge don't we?)...
One might need to look into scale-out and stacking concepts to a further extent. Most inverters out today can stack 8-10 wide.
What this type of wife may be after: In the datacenter industry, they call it the five-9s, which is a Tier V level service (99.999% uptime), amounts to 5 minutes and 15 seconds per year downtime. The customer (wife in this case) is the perfect beta tester for this challenge, the dreaded Tier V service level.
Once the beholder of this service-level dilemma understands their customer better, that he may ascend beyond the initial frustration, and start into drawing up some revisions from the original design in effort to attempt to meet today's most demanding of customers.
And thus the DIY Solar Forum exists today, where we of the initially defeated, can group together and help each other figure out creative ways to meet the increasing demands of the modern world.
I didn't say it would be cheap. At least if the wife doesn't mind not getting her husband to buy expensive diamond rings, fancy earrings, or necklaces for her, the men can instead spend all that same cash on their solar system. And why would we spend that much to do this? Because it's worth it, a happy wife is a happy life.
I couldn't just go out and tell my enterprise customer using the datacenter services, to 'only use the service during certain hours' or they'd flip out...
So out with the scarcity mindset, and in with the abundance mindset, full steam ahead and never look back.
(stepping down from podium)
Ref:
What is Five 9s Availability? Do you really need 99.999% Server Uptime?
Five 9s availability represents an ideal that is achieved with less than 6 minutes of downtime per year—but do you need it?
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