Thread: The next nuclear plants .The answer to our climate goals.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Sounds good. German gear is good quality. If your bill is only $8 then you're doing well.
Assuming your system runs the house and exports the surplus to the grid, then demand management might be the key for you.
Move all possible power consumption to the daytime when your power is free. Run your air-con in the daytime to cool the house and turn it off at dusk. Get your water heater reset to heat in the daytime, not at night when it costs you money.
Minimise what you have to draw from the grid at night. Turn off lights and unnecessary consumption.
Check what feed in tariff you are getting from the power company. It should be at least 15 cents. Shop around. There are deals.
Make the system work for you.

No Air-con in summer fans run all night, hot water is gas demand heated, gas stove, the only power points turned on all night are running the fridge freezer. The hot water heater is a pain, because it takes so long to get up to temp, we risk wasting water. So, I shave by boiling the jug, and wash dishes the same way. No dishwasher. I water my gardens by watering can, and keep a mental account of the amount used. Probably not necessary yet, but it pays to have good habits.

Sounds good except for the hot water heater. Can you get it reset to the daytime?
In this weather we don't actually need much hot water for showering.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Do you have a 5 KW inverter?

yes

Now this tread seems to have turned to Solar Pannels instead of nuclear power (I would love a Nuclear Power Plant) I have found out something interesting.
When we first put Solar on the Roadhouse I would walk out the back door for the 3 meter walk to work on a hot, sunny morning & think "Great, we are making power."
But I noticed as the day got hotter & our power usage went up the power the solar produced leveled off.
How can this be? Its 40 odd degrees, the suns overhead, no clouds & the power produced is not going up?

So I phoned the suppliers & was told "Yep mate, once the pannels get hot they decrease in efficiancy!"
What the?
So solar is great as long as it's sunny, but not to hot, or cloudy, or raining, & they are clean, none of the inverters go US & so on.
We save about a 3rd to a half of on our previous power bills which is a substantial amount of money but it is not as much as I thought we would save considering the investment.
We are running 39 A/C units alone, with all the other stuff we do pull a lot of power but free it ain't, especially this time of year!

Jonesfam

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Sounds good except for the hot water heater. Can you get it reset to the daytime?
In this weather we don't actually need much hot water for showering.

The gas heater is a Rinnai B20, 50 degree F compliant. Set and forget, apparently. Not as good as our 30 year old one that was replaced, but uses a lot less gas. Once up to temp. there's no problem, but water usage until it gets to temp is. Mainly a problem in the kitchen sink, which we get around by either using the jug, or letting the water run in the 2nd sink [ twin sink setup] until it gets hot, and then use that cold water to water our pot plants, and herbs on the verandah. We recently had all our water and gas pipes replaced. Made quite a difference to the water quality, the old gal. pipes were full of rust. We were getting plenty of iron. The house was built in 1952, and they were the original pipes.

Originally Posted by bob10

The gas heater is a Rinnai B20, 50 degree F compliant. Set and forget, apparently. Not as good as our 30 year old one that was replaced, but uses a lot less gas. Once up to temp. there's no problem, but water usage until it gets to temp is. Mainly a problem in the kitchen sink, which we get around by either using the jug, or letting the water run in the 2nd sink [ twin sink setup] until it gets hot, and then use that cold water to water our pot plants, and herbs on the verandah. We recently had all our water and gas pipes replaced. Made quite a difference to the water quality, the old gal. pipes were full of rust. We were getting plenty of iron. The house was built in 1952, and they were the original pipes.

It is very hard to beat an instantaneous gas heater for hot water production using gas.
No need to store and reheat water and these days they don't even run a "pilot" light so even if you are away you don't have to shut it down as it won't use any gas until you turn the hot tap on

Originally Posted by bob10

The gas heater is a Rinnai B20, 50 degree F compliant. Set and forget, apparently. Not as good as our 30 year old one that was replaced, but uses a lot less gas. Once up to temp. there's no problem, but water usage until it gets to temp is. Mainly a problem in the kitchen sink, which we get around by either using the jug, or letting the water run in the 2nd sink [ twin sink setup] until it gets hot, and then use that cold water to water our pot plants, and herbs on the verandah. We recently had all our water and gas pipes replaced. Made quite a difference to the water quality, the old gal. pipes were full of rust. We were getting plenty of iron. The house was built in 1952, and they were the original pipes.

Are you aware there is a recirculating system available that primes the pipes with hot water and doesn’t waste any.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Are you aware there is a recirculating system available that primes the pipes with hot water and doesn’t waste any.

No. Can't see it fitting into our system, though.