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Wife wanted to use the dryer WTF!!!!!

T

twinpartners

The grass is always greener on the other side
Joined
Sep 5, 2023
Messages
109
Location
Florida
First full day watching our energy consuption with the new toys. SunGold 10KW split phase and fully charged 48v 310AH (15.8 kwh) that took 4 hours to charge last night at 60 amps. After one last look over absolutely everything I decided to flip the switch and turn off grid power. Man, that baby was humming! Got through breakfast after running the coffee maker and toaster. Most of the morning was watching for the 1st AC to kick in and then the 2nd AC. The soft starts were doing their thang!!! Barely hit 5kw and then down to almost zero. Made it through lunch with 2 minutes of microwave and one AC running without a sweat. By 2 PM the battery was still only at 53% and I'm thinking...this is gonna be AWESOME. Then around 3 PM the wifey wants to use the dryer. Clothes been sitting in there most of the day and she finally put her foot down. I said, OK, lets give it a try and see how the SunGold handles it. She cranks that baby up and SHAZAM! Holy cow....8KW draw and the battery shows 200 amp draw and I'm thinking...holy sh1t batman...WTF. My Victron Connect app goes from me having about 15 more hours of power to 5 minutes. Battery starts to sink rapidly and I damn near wanted to cry. After watching my whole house cruise all day I just got hit with a huge dose of reality. There ain't no soft start to fix this shit. DAMN! Well, went ahead and let the dryer run on battery for about 15 minutes and when it got down to 45% I decided there was no use to use it all up just for that. Flipped back to grid power and decided to take the hit and call it a day. Was still very happy and impressed with my setup for lasting from 7 AM - 3 PM on battery alone. But, crap, looks like running the dryer for an hour is one hell of a load :-(
 
twinpartners said:
First full day watching our energy consuption with the new toys. SunGold 10KW split phase and fully charged 48v 310AH (15.8 kwh) that took 4 hours to charge last night at 60 amps. After one last look over absolutely everything I decided to flip the switch and turn off grid power. Man, that baby was humming! Got through breakfast after running the coffee maker and toaster. Most of the morning was watching for the 1st AC to kick in and then the 2nd AC. The soft starts were doing their thang!!! Barely hit 5kw and then down to almost zero. Made it through lunch with 2 minutes of microwave and one AC running without a sweat. By 2 PM the battery was still only at 53% and I'm thinking...this is gonna be AWESOME. Then around 3 PM the wifey wants to use the dryer. Clothes been sitting in there most of the day and she finally put her foot down. I said, OK, lets give it a try and see how the SunGold handles it. She cranks that baby up and SHAZAM! Holy cow....8KW draw and the battery shows 200 amp draw and I'm thinking...holy sh1t batman...WTF. My Victron Connect app goes from me having about 15 more hours of power to 5 minutes. Battery starts to sink rapidly and I damn near wanted to cry. After watching my whole house cruise all day I just got hit with a huge dose of reality. There ain't no soft start to fix this shit. DAMN! Well, went ahead and let the dryer run on battery for about 15 minutes and when it got down to 45% I decided there was no use to use it all up just for that. Flipped back to grid power and decided to take the hit and call it a day. Was still very happy and impressed with my setup for lasting from 7 AM - 3 PM on battery alone. But, crap, looks like running the dryer for an hour is one hell of a load :-(
Click to expand...
I couldn't help but laugh because I am running 6kw split phase now and have a SRNE 12K that I was going to put on the 240v loads and was seeing 200A with 400A peeks, Holy Crap BatMan! Buddy is getting me some 3/0 welding cable. Crazy Current!
 
Get a heatpump dryer, they do the same job, take about the same amount of time (super thick things are a bit slower but be real how often are you rushing to get your laundry as soon as its done) are actually gentler on clothing due to reduced heat, and most importantly they use on avg 600-800W. Personally i have The Miele T1 heatpump dryer and i love it. I have a husky so it sees plenty of fur and its never cared. have the matching washing machine to go with it as well.

The only two things to get used to is going to be telling if laundry is actually dry, humans suck ass at sensing moisture we guess based on temp. so when you go to heatpump and suddenly its not as hot since they are abusing be a dehumidifier it FEELS like your laundry is still damp. but if you just take it out and wait for it to fully cool you will realize its totally dry. takes some getting used to. and then there is a secondary lint filter that needs cleaned occasionally. there is the normal inside the dryer door one that gets all the big stuff and there is also one on the bottom left of the unit behind a little pop door to catch the tiny stuff before it hits the heatpump condenser/evap and that just occasionally needs vacuumed out and like once a year washed out.

cant recommend it enough, i have talked people not even using solar into it and they have seen their energy bills drop literally just from that lol.
 
I run my electric dryer off my 10kW and it is a big draw until it gets up to temperature (about 12-15mins) after that it cycles the 5400W heat for just a few minutes until dry. All in all to dry a full load it is not bad though I try to do it during high solar production time to keep the battery bank up.
 
Am I missing something.
I was wondering why the PV was not handling the dryer when it's daytime and then I realized he had charged the Batteries from the Grid at night. Is this supposed to be some kind of backup system to get you through a power outage or are you on one of those plans that offers free power at night?
 
MrNatural22 said:
This works much more efficiently
View attachment 331192
:cool:
Click to expand...
And you would be surprised on a hot summer day how quickly it works.
I put out 8 wet towels on the Shed Line and they were dry in 2 hours.
After that I just dropped them into the Dryer for 15 minute air fluff to soften them and they felt great.
We don't dry heavy items like Towels or Blankets in the Dryer because of the energy usage.
 
robby said:
Am I missing something.
I was wondering why the PV was not handling the dryer when it's daytime and then I realized he had charged the Batteries from the Grid at night. Is this supposed to be some kind of backup system to get you through a power outage or are you on one of those plans that offers free power at night?
Click to expand...
It's Phase I. PV coming much later at some point. It functions as backup in case of power outages (I'm in FL) and I can draw power from grid and generator if needed. However, instead of it just sitting there doing nothing, if it can run a lot of my home and then only require 4 hours of charge at night, why not use it? It ran my house from 7 AM - 3 PM, ran the dryer from grid for an hour and in that time the grid/inverter charged it back up to 90%. So far today I've been on the grid for 1 hour and used the battery for 10 hours. I'm thinking there is got to be "some" savings there. But, right now I am just figuring this out ;-). Today was the 1st time I had it on and I'm measuring usage and getting some on-the-job training!
 

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my wife will run the dryer 10 times some days. It'll work, but you need to size it appropriately, you can't use what you don't have. I have 90kwh of battery and 18k inverter. My wife said i can do what i want, as long as it doesn't impact her in any way. So I had to size my system to accommodate her power usage.

Dryer spikes.

1758317752190.png
 
Ha! reminds me of the time many years ago at my off grid cabin my friend and his wife visited. She took upon her self to run the vacuum cleaner at 9am while my old lead acid system was still recovering from last nights drain. Dumped the whole house power in 5min! Like WTF are you doing!
 
I have 180 kWh worth of battery storage and I still wince when we use the dryer. I would love to get a heat pump dryer but this olde thing keeps on running and I will keep repairing it until it craps out for good. By then we either have small nuclear reactor dryers or I'm brown bread.
 
I explicitly moved from a $300 Whirlpool el-cheapo 6 kW 240V electric dryer to a $2k GE Combo (heat-pump washer/dryer).
This moved the washer/dryer capability to my critical loads panel on a 120V circuit, where my system can run it during power outages (I'm still on-grid).

Lint cleaning has been painful, but that's another thread.
 
The dryer is also pumping out your conditioned air [assuming the dryer is indoors] adding to your HVAC loading.

I saw videos where they sealed the dryer and added a large intake duct up to the hot attic. In Florida the air will be preheated, and maybe you can reduce using the heating elements. EDIT found one:
 
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Wife likes the electric heat in the mornings- Good thing to have grid backup , no dryer , EV charging, or hot tub heat running in the graph when the house heat was running Screenshot 2025-09-19 150345.png otherwise the 18K PV would scream uncle. Even at 10KW discharge rate the batteries go quick.
 
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