Essential standby equipment, energy use and solutions

[SteamyTea]

19 minutes ago, jack said:

Is there a formal definition of "base load"?

Not for a house that I know off.

There could be a number of different way to define it being the problem.

Should it be just the essentials that have to stay on i.e. a fridge and lighting.

Then the secondary essentials i.e. freezer, cooking and DHW.

Then the nice to haves i.e. central heating, treatment plants, MVHR/Ventilation. Dish and clothes washing.

Then the discretionary stuff i.e. entertainment, swimming pools, A/C.

[jack]

Yes, exactly.

 

There's no point me saying my baseload is 300 W if we don't all understand whether that includes intermittent devices like fridges (intermittent but pretty regular) and cookers (intermittent and less predictable/regular than a fridge).

[ProDave]

I did some more testing on my cupboard full of stuff today.  I tried powering it all up via a little inverter from a 12V battery and measuring the actual DC power used.

 

First issue, the start up current of the printer tripped the 200W inverter I was using.  Clearly I would need something bigger to account for things like that.  So everything else apart from the printer, consumed 7 amps at 12V DC so that's 84 watts of DC into the inverter to power my cupboard full of stuff.  That's not as high as I initially though, confirming the simple ac VA measurement was highlighting a lousy power factor.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, jack said:

Yes, exactly.

 

There's no point me saying my baseload is 300 W if we don't all understand whether that includes intermittent devices like fridges (intermittent but pretty regular) and cookers (intermittent and less predictable/regular than a fridge).

Where you need to use a distribution.

Here is mine for 2019.  Just be careful with the x-axis as it doubles in value for each bin.

You can see when the DHW is on (3200 bin) DHW and 1 storage heater (6400 bin) and DHW, both storage heater and the washing machine (12800 bin).

Really hard to tell if base load should be 0 W (0 bin), greater than 0 W and up to 50 W (50 bin).

The means are 0W 54%, >0 <=50 15.2%.

At nearly 15.2% below 50W, over a year, that is a maximum of 66 kWh, or 0.2 kWh/day, which is not far off what my fridge uses (bit more in the summer, bit less in the winter). My fridge is the only think that can come on when it wants to.

 

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> Is there a formal definition of "base load"?

 

Well I was taking it as the load of all 'the stuff' left on continuously e.g when you e.g. go away for the weekend. I know some will manage to turn everything off!

 

So, fridge, freezer, network stuff, misc small stuff on power bricks, smoke alarm sensors, smart home stuff etc.

 

No heating or hot water, but no PV/battery contribution either.

 

I wasn't looking at it as a science as everyone lives their life differently, but just to get a sense of the range. That way, the high users might see if they could really turn some stuff off and if so what. Medium users would know they were average. Low users could tell us all what we could all do to reduce.

 

For those that have 'zero energy' periods - how do you do that !?! You don't have a fridge?

 

Alan

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> First issue, the start up current of the printer tripped the 200W inverter I was using.  Clearly I would need something bigger to account for things like that.  So everything else apart from the printer, consumed 7 amps at 12V DC

 

No chance of powering any of those items directly from 12V to avoid some of the ELV->LV->ELV conversion?

 

Alan

[SteamyTea]

7 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

 

For those that have 'zero energy' periods - how do you do that !?! You don't have a fridge

Not a contiguous period, just the sampling averages (around every 8 seconds).

A fridge, if working properly and not installed next to something hot i.e. radiator, oven, over UFH, will consume very little. Especially if it is full of stuff. Most food is water, so lots of energy transfer is needed to change the temp by 1⁰C.

 

Thinking about it a bit more, a period of zero draw cannot be considered base load.

It could be included in the under 100 W range (or 50 W, or 300 W).

My fridge has a mean power draw of about 8 W.

[jack]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Where you need to use a distribution.

 

But yours will look very different to mine, in a way that probably can't be distilled into a single meaningful number.

 

Perhaps "baseload" is not actually that useful a term.

[SteamyTea]

7 minutes ago, jack said:

 

But yours will look very different to mine, in a way that probably can't be distilled into a single meaningful number.

 

Perhaps "baseload" is not actually that useful a term.

Skew may be useful.

 

[Adsibob]

Has anybody calculated how much power they consume worrying about these things by posting on and reading this forum? 

[Radian]

8 hours ago, jack said:

Is there a formal definition of "base load"?

 

If it means the absolute minimum, then we're somewhere around 300 W. 

 

This is what, I think, is the most useful take-home about baseload - when it represents the minimum power draw from a house. Dynamic loads like fridges, lights and central heating pumps are all very dependant on occupancy and time of year and are best represented by averages. But the minimum power draw is a figure that we can use to spot problems that are costing us unnecessary expense. Having read how @jack had a UFH pump running unnoticed I've now implemented a node-red function that monitors daily minimum and sends me a notification if it's exceeded by more than a threshold value over a 24H period. Going to be a bit of fine-tuning to get it to the point where it's useful but I haven't seen any obvious problems yet.

[jack]

4 hours ago, Adsibob said:

Has anybody calculated how much power they consume worrying about these things by posting on and reading this forum? 

 

It doesn't worry me, I quite enjoy the process and the chat.

[SteamyTea]

13 hours ago, Adsibob said:

calculated how much power they consume

I eat about 2.5 kWh/day and my house uses just a bit more.

If I 'worry' and hour away on here, this 0.25 kWh.

9 hours ago, Radian said:

minimum power draw is a figure that we can use to spot problems

It is how I spotted my fridge had gone wonky.

[jack]

10 hours ago, Radian said:

But the minimum power draw is a figure that we can use to spot problems that are costing us unnecessary expense. Having read how @jack had a UFH pump running unnoticed 

 

A more important one, which I mentioned in another thread, was a fan heater that my son left running full bore overnight in the garage gym. 

 

The gym sometimes isn't used for a few days at a time, so that could have been an expensive one.

 

I only noticed it because the display screen for our smart meter is in my office, and it was showing high and persistent energy consumption despite the fact I knew nothing significant should be on.

[Jenki]

@ProDave, id be interested knowing what wind turbine you would be looking at.  have you seen this guy on you tube?  some interesting stuff on braking  and dump loads etc. and his mix of LifePo4 and lead acid battery storage.

We are about 3 months in full time living in Caithness, and a wind turbine has to be an option for me. we are constantly seeing winds of 12-15mph. then the winds pick up and we can have hours @ 20 - 30 MPH.

biggest issue for me, is permitted development only allows 1 turbine, anymore and I need planning permission and when I tried for the original planning application the information they were requesting about the turbine was impossible to get from a cheap Chinese version. So that leads me to think I should go big but then that comes with a cost and risk...... decisions decisions   

 

 

 

 

[ProDave]

The turbine I was thinking of was this one. https://uk.vevor.com/wind-turbine-c_10731/vevor-wind-turbine-generator-kit-12v-wind-power-generator-500w-w-mppt-5-blades-p_010867819262

 

I have not got as far as looking at the youtube reviews to see if it is a pile of junk or actually works.

 

If I did go down this off grid system, the advantage of 12V or 24V is lots of cheap turbines, solar panels and inverters.

 

But I am not yet convinced that is the way to increase my self generation effectively.  What is abundantly clear especially when PV is in the mix, is you get way more power in the summer.  So you either size it to meet your needs in the summer and it will have to charge from the grid in winter, or you size it for winter and in summer it will generate way more than you can use and the investment will be wasted or at least not optimally used.

 

So I am now thinking what can I get away with by way of a grid tied PV + battery system designed to supply power when the main PV system is not and specifically so it never exports a drop.  I might be sailing close to the wind if I try anything like that.  But worth discussing in due course.

 

In the mean time I have been adopting the @SteamyTea philosophy of No 1, reduce usage.  That seems to come back to the sky box which seems to have a rated power in the order of 50W.  I need to reduce the time it is used.  Part of that issue has been poor freeview reception here meaning I almost always watch satellite tv.  Yesterday I spent several hours trying to work on that, trying again to better align the aerial, trying a slightly different location for it and then trying a different masthead amplifier.  I have made an improvement that makes it mostly watchable while still far from perfect. That has allowed me to drastically reduce the timer settings so the sky box is on for about half the time it used to be.  I will see in just over a week if it makes any measurable difference in my metered usage of "other stuff"

 

[Jenki]

35 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The turbine I was thinking of this one. https://uk.vevor.com/wind-turbine-c_10731/vevor-wind-turbine-generator-kit-12v-wind-power-generator-500w-w-mppt-5-blades-p_010867819262

 

The guy on You tube has reviewed a few which are junk and mainly points  at two manufacturers on AliExpress. 

A non technical point is that weight is important. Copper is heavy, and the generator needs to be big thus heavy. He's reviewed a few 500w turbines and they weigh 11.5kg (top weight) the vevor only 9.5kg net? However they are double the cost.

 

[billt]

Hugh Piggott is a bit of an expert in wind turbines. https://scoraigwind.co.uk/about/

He has a realistic take on them.

[SteamyTea]

32 minutes ago, billt said:

Hugh Piggott is a bit of an expert in wind turbines. https://scoraigwind.co.uk/about/

He has a realistic take on them.

My old (actually younger than me) university supervisor had long email conversations with him.

The conclusion was, don't bother, buy a half decent professionally made one.

It is a real shame that Proven are no longer about (think they got bought by Kingspan, their 4 kW turbine was rugged and reliable (unlike the 6 kW).

 

[ProDave]

On 10/11/2022 at 16:37, ProDave said:

n the mean time I have been adopting the @SteamyTea philosophy of No 1, reduce usage.  That seems to come back to the sky box which seems to have a rated power in the order of 50W.  I need to reduce the time it is used.  Part of that issue has been poor freeview reception here meaning I almost always watch satellite tv.  Yesterday I spent several hours trying to work on that, trying again to better align the aerial, trying a slightly different location for it and then trying a different masthead amplifier.  I have made an improvement that makes it mostly watchable while still far from perfect. That has allowed me to drastically reduce the timer settings so the sky box is on for about half the time it used to be.  I will see in just over a week if it makes any measurable difference in my metered usage of "other stuff"

First full week of data and I recon just shortening the time this wasteful sky box is on, has saved me about 4kWh per week comparing this weeks "other stuff" usage with long term average.

[Pocster]

On 07/11/2022 at 17:41, Adsibob said:

Has anybody calculated how much power they consume worrying about these things by posting on and reading this forum? 

Think of all the energy we / I waste by posting . I heard a rumour that @Onoff ‘s bathroom thread consumed over a gigawatt…

[ProDave]

11 minutes ago, pocster said:

I heard a rumour that @Onoff ‘s bathroom thread consumed over a gigawatt…

And it is STILL not finished (UFH not working)

[Radian]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

First full week of data and I recon just shortening the time this wasteful sky box is on, has saved me about 4kWh per week comparing this weeks "other stuff" usage with long term average.

Our 1TB Sky Q box, when active, draws about 20W. Active standby is around 17W. So even if it was on all week long it would only consume 3.3kWh What model do you have?

[ProDave]

I actually took one box consuming about 20W out of use completely, and the main one an original Sky HD box consuming about 50W is not on 8 hours a day less.

[Radian]

46 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I actually took one box consuming about 20W out of use completely, and the main one an original Sky HD box consuming about 50W is not on 8 hours a day less.

Ah, the older HD boxes were a bit power hungry. Do you ever run into problems with scheduling recordings?