topic Re: Solar system and hot water in Solar, Batteries & Electrification

Solar system and hot water

Beej — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 02:14:09 GMT

I am on an AGL plan with CL1 and CL2 and have recently installed solar which is currently making a healthy 45kwh+/day but of course now that I can see our usage in real time through the AGL app, 70% of our energy usage is 7-9pm! I am wondering about our hot water (two separate tanks) - I had always assumed that it was on CL overnight yet the smart meter shows me we have essentially no energy usage overnight. How can I tell what the timing is on my hot water? There are no obvious timers on the fuse box. Any thoughts appreciated!

Thanks!

Beej

Re: Solar system and hot water

TonyR — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 08:24:14 GMT

I would also like an answer to this, slightly different scenario. My major usage is 10pm-11pm and I'm guessing that's the hot water system system as the kWH used kind of lines up with how much power the hot water system consumed when I was on two separate tariffs. Now that I have Solar and a Smart meter, however, I've been swapped to a single tariff, so I'd like the hot water system to kick in at say 10AM and therefore use mostly free power.

Is this possible and... I'd also like to know how to confirm the timing on the hot water system.

Re: Solar system and hot water

Lester — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 02:25:49 GMT

Old thread that came up when a reply today with spam link contained, reported that along with 3 other such replies after the one from Tony back in 2020.

Anyway, FWIW now, some 4 years later . . .

We've had solar a touch over a year, back then we had an old analogue meter on single tariff, and a CL meter for off peak HWS use, metered separately.and of course, had to have the new digital meter put in for the solar 2 way info.

As we didn't know any better about what the upgrade entailed, SAPN here in SA came out and installed 2 new smart meters, one for general usage, and one for CL usage.

The CL one just operates at usual off peak type times and / or solar soak hours tariff (not our solar though), and knowing that now, we should have asked for the single new meter, with HWS on regular circuit, and then got a timer or Catch Power fitted so we could time it for say 0930 - 1600 for free HW, or in the wee hours 0000 - 0600 if needed for top off winter when we have an 8c/kwh deal.

As it is now, we have a sparky booked for 2 days time to finally put the HWS onto normal circuit with a basic dumb timer we can adjust to suit our very low needs for HW.

It was costing us around $1.40 a day for HWS power, doesn't sound much, but that still adds a $100 or so to the quarterly bill.

When we get a battery, that will all be a moot point, but that might be months away, or, we might find we can defer a battery another 12 months.

(I'm determined, within reason, to get 100% self sufficient with electricity use.)