We all know that residential heating load is highest in the winter and cooling load is highest in the summer. What's a bit more subtle is how the seasons, and how we respond to them, change the loads on other household energy uses.
For example - this summer our basement temperature climbed above 70F, and the incoming water temperature from the water pressure tank was in the mid to upper 60Fs. Here at year's end, the basement temperature is in the mid-50Fs, and cold water temperature has dropped to as low as 48F. Both of these changes since summer add load to the water heater, as it must provide more energy to get the lower temperature water up to 120F, and the tank loses more heat to the colder basement. Here's a graph of our DHW usage in gallons/day (GPD) and the corresponding kWh/day:
August through December DHW usage has been very constant at about 14 GPD, yet kWh/day has gone from just over 2 to just over 3.
Similarly, the 15 ft3 chest freezer is in the basement, and the refrigerator is on the main floor, both of which areas are cooler than they were in the summer. Here's the kWh/month usage combined for both devices:
The load on the freezer and fridge drops because the spaces they are located in are cooler, so the temperature difference driving their heat gain is lower. In addition, the heat rejection components work more efficiently to reject heat to the surroundings when the air is cooler, so it takes less energy to meet the load. Just as with the water heater, the two effects combine to change the energy usage, but in the case of the freezer and fridge, the energy usage goes down. That reduction isn't as large as the increase in energy used by the heat pump water heater, unfortunately! Again I find myself wishing for a fridge/freezer that rejects heat to a DHW preheat tank, just as it's done in commercial refrigeration. But energy will need to get more costly before that device appears.
What do you use to measure your water usage? Do you have a submeter with pulse output, or? I've been wanting to hook something up - frustrated that I can't get the data directly out of new fancy wireless Neptune digital meter. :(
Posted by: Eric | 01/01/2012 at 05:08 PM
Jerman water meters from www.watermeters.com. You can get them with a pulse output and use a datalogger to count the pulses, or get a manual-read model like I did.
Posted by: Marc Rosenbaum | 01/01/2012 at 09:17 PM
Hey, that's great data. Thanks for the link on watermeters.com. I'll have to look into getting some of those on my systems.
Have you rigged up your own data logging software or used something like WEL to track the inputs from the logger?
Posted by: Ted Inoue | 01/06/2012 at 04:32 PM