Idiot's guide to a self build battery

[Oldgreybeard]

Although the principle of "energy saving" directives limiting the maximum power for things like kettles is a bit flawed (a 1.5kW kettle wastes more energy than a 2.5kW one, for example) there is merit in choosing lower power appliances when running from an inverter, just to keep the peak demand down. We have a boiling water tap, not the most energy efficient thing to have, but it does have the big advantage of only drawing very short pulses of power at about 1.5kW maximum. It's one less thing to worry about when thinking of simultaneous loads. it's hard wired to a time switch, so is only on during the day and early evening and overall I don't think it uses much, if any, more energy through a day than a kettle would.

[MrPablo]

Do you have any workarounds for this (opening it up and bypassing the on switch probably not what I'm looking for ) or stick to more dumb dehumidifiers?

I think this is one of those situations where a dumb appliance is more of a help than a hindrance, not that helps you in this case!
One thing to consider is the type of appliance as well, my dehumidifier is a desiccant model so should cope ok with stop and start. I wouldn't like to do this with a compressor model.
Short of opening it up, might not be much you can do.

[Stinsy]

I like ideas like this but the more modern an appliance is, I find, the more likely it has its own "smarts" and simply doesn't come back on after being turned off/on at the plug with a smart plug. You need to physically go press an "on" button on my dehumidifier for example to get it going again

Do you have any workarounds for this (opening it up and bypassing the on switch probably not what I'm looking for ) or stick to more dumb dehumidifiers?

I have this dehumidifier: https://amzn.eu/d/21fzC88

It works perfectly via a smartplug (turns on when power is restored).

[Krill]

Although the principle of "energy saving" directives limiting the maximum power for things like kettles is a bit flawed (a 1.5kW kettle wastes more energy than a 2.5kW one, for example) there is merit in choosing lower power appliances when running from an inverter, just to keep the peak demand down. We have a boiling water tap, not the most energy efficient thing to have, but it does have the big advantage of only drawing very short pulses of power at about 1.5kW maximum. It's one less thing to worry about when thinking of simultaneous loads. it's hard wired to a time switch, so is only on during the day and early evening and overall I don't think it uses much, if any, more energy through a day than a kettle would.

I was wondering about a boiling water tap.

What's it like to use? Do you fill up a teapot with it?

[Stinsy]

I was wondering about a boiling water tap.

What's it like to use? Do you fill up a teapot with it?

I have a boiling water tap (cheapo Insinkerator branded one) It is brill. Fills a saucepan of boiling water for pasta or whatever, perfect for the washing up bowl, halves the time it takes to make a cup of tea.

[marshman]

__

[Oldgreybeard]

As Stinsy says, it's brilliant. Not only can you make tea very quickly, but it also saves time, and I think also energy, when cooking things like peas or rice. Often there is no need to heat a saucepan at all. For peas we just put them in a small pyrex bowl and fill that with boiling water. A few minutes later the peas are cooked and ready to serve. Much the same with rice and pasta.

Doesn't seem to have a big impact on energy consumption as far as I've been able to tell. Ours turns on its heater about once every 20 to 30 minutes for around 20 seconds or so. During the day (it's on a time switch) it will usually turn on around 30 to 40 times, depends how often it's used, so it uses around 300Wh to 400Wh per day at the most. There's usually enough PV to cover most of that, so the running cost is pretty low. It's roughly the same as running a 2kW kettle for around 12 minutes a day.

[Krill]

Thanks for posting your experiences.

The lesson I'm taking away is that it is another incremental change that can reduce gas use (gas hob to cook on including boiling a kettle).

[Tinbum]

I like ideas like this but the more modern an appliance is, I find, the more likely it has its own "smarts" and simply doesn't come back on after being turned off/on at the plug with a smart plug. You need to physically go press an "on" button on my dehumidifier for example to get it going again

Do you have any workarounds for this (opening it up and bypassing the on switch probably not what I'm looking for ) or stick to more dumb dehumidifiers?

You can get a device that you stick on near the switch that will press the switch- can't quite recall its name at the moment.

Remembered;

https://uk.switch-bot.com/

[Tinbum]

One thing to consider is the type of appliance as well, my dehumidifier is a desiccant model so should cope ok with stop and start. I wouldn't like to do this with a compressor model.

I run heat pumps controlled by my frequency system, based on an Arduino mega and Node-Red, but have timers set in the code so that they can't turn on until they have been off for a certain time and similarly they stay on for a minimum time. Works really well. I also set prioritising within the code to get the best out of each kWh as best I can.