Heat Banks & Off peak power

[testmatch]

Hi, We have a Unidare heat bank which under the old J tariff system heated at night hence the heat being released during the day which it was designed to do. With this controlled load plan they heat up slowly during the day and release heat over night. This is opposite to what we want.Please how can we rectify this otherwise are these units are now obselete?

Thanks

Grant

[Lester]

What system have you got now, on an older analogue meter, or time of use digital meter ?

Something obviously changed with your system / meter(s).

If TOU, it might depend where you are how you should handle this.

Here in SA, shoulder 1000 - 1500 is cheaper than off peak 2330 - 0630, and obviously you want to avoid peak during the day / early evening like the plague.

One way to get what you want as far as timings go is to get a dumb timer installed on the CL heat bank, so it comes on when you want it to, perhaps shoulder (solar soak) times as above if relevant to your location.

[testmatch]

Many thanks for your helpful reply. We have a smart meter. Are the these dumb meters on the switch board between that and the unit. We have 3 of them.

Kind Regards

Grant (testmatch)

[Lester]

Hi Grant,

Not sure what you have there, but if you have dumb timers, they are set on particular appliance circuits, might be one, or two items usually at most, that you want to run at a particular block of time.

Eg, might be a HWS, an EV charger, pool heater, floor heating etc, or your heat bank.

I just googled Unidare heat bank and nothing came up but another brand of heat bank . . . must admit I have never heard of these before, is it a old or fairly new tech ?

I am looking to install a dumb timer on my HWS, so I can programme it for day time solar boost, or in summer and perhaps the 2 shoulder months just let solar look after the HWS altogether and not allow it to charge on our cheapest EV night saver rate in the early hours of the morning.

Such a timer should cost no more than $500 or so installed.

Our other option offered by a solar company was to fit a large hot water diverter / controller, at $1800 odd, this senses solar output and charges if anything is sensed going to the grid.

But all that's really needed is a simple (dumb) timer we can set ourselves as peak winter / other change, a simple task I'm happy to do a couple of times a year.

We don't really have anything else that would benefit from a timer, if / when we get a battery it will have that ability to charge (in dead of winter if needed) at whatever time it is programmed to sense the need.