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| 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.
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.
I'm also excited to see heat pump clothes dryers in the US, however at $1600 it is way overpriced. Even the LG website only claims that you could save around $400 in energy costs over the product's lifetime. Hopefully the price will settle down to around the $600 range in the near future. I have a question for you, do you have your ecobee thermostats set to let the house cool down at night / when you are away? I just got an ecobee 3 and installed in on my single stage water furnace. Before I always kept the temperature the same, but now I'm adjusting it to fluctuate during the day and night, while making sure my electric backup doesn't kick on. Do you think it is more efficient leave it at the same temperature or fluctuate? I don't have enough data of my own to truly answer that yet.
ReplyDeleteI allow it to fluctuate about 2-3F to minimize time in stage 2. I've heard people say that for geothermal systems, like mine, it tends to be more efficient if you stay at one temp. I'm not sure, and haven't tested it. I would say, if you do this, to set your ecobee to maintain a tight temp (+/- 1F or less).
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