Tigo Gateway 'fried', Desuperheater for upstairs, heat pump dryer

My Tigo Control Panel

So the guys from Renu Energy (formerly GreenSpring Energy) came by to check out why my Tigo is broken again.  After after 3 hours of work and constantly going from the roof to the attic to my bonus room (where the Tigo control panel is located), they finally gave up.  Essentially they think the Gateway (located on the roof) is 'fried'.  Tigo is going to send a new gateway to me which they'll exchange for my current one so they can try to diagnose what went wrong.  I'll hopefully get the new unit in 1-2 weeks and Tigo will be up and running.  Now, when I say fried...it just means that Tigo isn't transferring the data.  I'm still getting solar power generation, so that's good.  And I think I'm still getting the benefit of of the Tigo, just not the data.  So stay tuned for more info.

OK...next up, desuperheaters.  One thing that's always annoyed me was that my geothermal install only had 1 desuperheater located on my downstairs unit.  And over the summer and swing seasons I always felt that the upstairs unit ran far longer than the downstairs unit for A/C.  Recall...the longer the runtime for A/C, the more hot water is generated from the desuperheater.  Well, i just confirmed this using the Ecobees.  Overall, the upstairs unit runs 2.2x more than the downstairs units when the A/C is running.  Thus, I'm missing out on ~70% of the potential hot water generation.  Bah!  So I'm looking into getting a desuperheater for my upstairs unit.  I've contacted my HVAC guys (Panther HVAC) to see what they recommend as I'm unused if I'd be looking at a WaterFurnace related unit or if I should go with an aftermarket unit (such as the Turbotec Enviro-Pak).  Stay tuned for more info once I get a reply back from Turbotec on their price along with a reply from my HVAC folks.

BTW...for folks that have a normal heat pump or A/C, you can use the Turbotec system to generate hot water too. You don't need a geotrhermal system to do it.  It's just useful to hopefully have your airhandler and your water heater near to each other.

One final thing...I just saw that LG has released the first heat pump dryer in the US.  Hooray!  It's 50-60% more efficient at drying than a conventional dryer.  As of now, my dryer is by far the largest energy consumer in my house.  The only thing bigger is my emergency heat for the geothermal system and that should never run...except well for emergencies, which hasn't happened.  Unfortunately, it's priced at $1,600 (MSRP) so hopefully prices will drop soon.  Not to mention, I don't need a new washer/dryer as I highly doubt there's any ROI unless I have to replace my unit anyway.

Feb/March/April Energy Bill. And Tigo broken again...

Hi Folks-

Yes, I've been a bad slacker. The kiddos are crawling now which means they are all over the place.  There's essentially really no such thing as free time anymore.  If you were in the Southeast this year, you'll know that its been pretty dang odd outside.  In April there were times where I needed heat for a couple of days...then I needed A/C for a couple days, and for the rest, I didn't need anything.  At least recently (May) I haven't needed any heat.  I'm trying like hell not to run the A/C and instead opening the windows.  But the humidity keeps creeping up which means eventually I have to give in.  At a minimum, I'm only running the upstairs system.  The downstairs is staying nice and cool.

Anyhow...without further ado...below are the numbers for February, March and April.

February 2013 (Feb 4 - Mar 4)
Energy Consumption:  901 kWh
Number of Billing days:  28
Average daily Consumption:  32.18 kWh/day
Degree Days:  620
Average Daily Usage/Degree Day:  1.45 kwh/DD
Billing Amount:  $91.68

February 2014 (Feb 1 - Mar 1)
Energy Consumption:  919 kWh (estimated)
Solar Generated to Grid:  135 kWh (estimated from TED5000)
Net Energy Consumption:  784 kWh
Number of Billing days:  28
Average daily Consumption:  28.00 kWh/day (13% reduction)
Degree Days: 543
Average Daily Usage/Degree Day:  1.44 kwh/DD
Billing Amount:  $87.91 ($11.75 monthly savings)

****

March 2013 (March 4 - April 2)
Energy Consumption:  737 kWh
Number of Billing days:  29
Average daily Consumption:  25.41 kWh/day
Degree Days:  444
Average Daily Usage/Degree Day:  1.60 kwh/DD
Billing Amount:  $77.46

March 2014 (March 1 - April 1)
Energy Consumption:  1,112 kWh (estimated)
Solar Generated to Grid:  183 kWh (high estimate from TED5000)
Net Energy Consumption:  929 kWh
Number of Billing days:  31
Average daily Consumption:  29.97 kWh/day (17.9% increase in usage)
Degree Days: 456
Average Daily Usage/Degree Day:  1.60 kwh/DD
Billing Amount:  $101.19 ($19.67 increase in cost)  *Rate increase vs 2013

****

April 2013 (April 2 - May 3)
Energy Consumption:  359 kWh
Number of Billing days:  30
Average daily Consumption:  11.97 kWh/day
Degree Days:  161
Average Daily Usage/Degree Day:  1.49 kwh/DD
Billing Amount:  $44.69

April 2014 (April 1 - May 1)
Energy Consumption:  493 kWh
Solar Generated to Grid:  109 kWh
Net Energy Consumption:  385 kWh
Number of Billing days:  30
Average daily Consumption:  12.83 kWh/day (7.24% increase in usage)
Degree Days: 183
Average Daily Usage/Degree Day:  1.97 kwh/DD
Billing Amount:  $51.24 ($11.53 increase in cost)  *Rate increase vs 2013

While February I was able to reduce costs, I got bit in the butt for March and April.  What surprised me was how the HDDs were the same as last year.  It sure didn't feel like it.  In April, I'm in my lowest energy usage period (swing month).  So you can clearly see the 'kid penalty' (those extra loads of laundry, extra dishes, bath-time, etc).  But it's not like it's THAT bad.  I will say that in March, we did get a new freezer for the garage.  It's 3x the size of the old one, but only uses about 50% more energy than the previous.  So this adds an additional 1 kWh/day to my bill roughly.

How are the solar panels doing?  Well so far we're about 124 kWh lower than projected.  One thing that is really annoying is that Tigo is broken again.  I contacted Greenspring already, but I need to follow-up with them so they can come out.  I'm betting its that dang connection coming loose in the attic again.  That's a bad place to have wires spliced together because it has such an extra temperature range (110F --> Teens).  Thus, copper wiring is going to expand/shrink a lot.  

	PVWatts	SolarEye	Expected	Actual
	Generation	DeRate	Generation	Generation
Month	kWh/mo	%	kWh/mo	kWh/mo	Notes
1	223	52%	116.0	135	TED5000 estimate.  Tigo broken
2	221	72%	159.1	135	TED5000 estimate.  Tigo broken
3	282	77%	217.1	183	TED5000 estimate.  Tigo broken
4	299	83%	248.2	209	TED5000 estimate.  Tigo broken
5	293	83%	243.2
6	277	82%	227.1
7	273	82%	223.9
8	278	82%	228.0
9	254	82%	208.3
10	270	75%	202.5
11	220	66%	145.2	96.21	Energized Nov 7th.  Fully Operational Nov 11th.
12	205	47%	96.4	99.37
Total	3095	74.8%	2315
			Expected	Actual	Diff
		To Date:	981.9	857.58	124.4