Nov/Dec Duke Energy Bill

I've been slacking a bit on posting my energy usage as I'm hoping to use Groovestream to upload my stuff automatically.  Still working on it so stay tuned.

My Nov and December bill results are posted below.  November (Oct 1 to Nov 1) wasn't too bad, but December (Nov 1 to Dec 1)...wow...I blew that out of the water using 50% more than last year.

November 2014 Daily Energy Consumption.  Note around the 16th how my energy usage significantly increases.

November Bill (Oct 2 to Nov 2) 2013
Total Consumption = 651 kWh
Days = 31
Average Daily Consumption = 21.0 kWh/day
Bill = $64.02

November Bill (Oct 1 to Nov 1) 2014
Total Consumption = 510 kWh
Days = 31
Average Daily Consumption = 16.45 kWh/day   (21.66% reduction vs 2013)
Bill = $63.14

December Bill (Oct 28 to Dec 1) 2013
Total Consumption = 906 kWh
Days = 34
Average Daily Consumption = 26.65 kWh/day
Bill = $96.66

December Bill (Nov 1 to Dec 1) 2014
Total Consumption = 1,202 kWh
Days = 30
Average Daily Consumption = 40.07 kWh/day   (50.4% increase vs 2013)
Bill = $126.46

I wanted to know what I used so much energy in 2014 vs 2013.  Yeah, I did host Thanksgiving this year and had family over, but that really couldn't be THAT much over 2013 given that it was just a week.  

For Comparison:  November 2013 Energy Consumption

Digging in, I see that I ran my HVAC system longer (see figures below)...which accounts for about 70 hrs longer in November (@2.25 kW) or 158 kWh/mo.  That's a good chunk.  Beyond that there's my my issues with the water heater, but that's tough to quantify....maybe 60-80 kWh/mo?  The 2x extra showers with family in the house could boost that a little bit...but that can't be more than 10-20 kWh/mo I would think.

Downstairs HVAC Usage from Ecobee (Weather Adjusted)

Upstairs HVAC Usage from Ecobee (Weather Adjusted)

You can easily see my energy usage spike after Nov 16th (Note:  I was away at a Conference!).  The low on Nov 25-26th is because the circuit breaker which the TED5000 was attached to busted (thank you Squirrels!), so I had to replace it and I lost a big chunk of data.

One thing is that my wife has been on a crazy clothes cleaning binge as she's prepping all the old kids clothes for the upcoming consignment sale.  So an extra 6 kWh/week (24 kWh/mo)?  That could put me in the neighborhood for similar energy usage.

Duke Energy Home Energy Report 2014

In Decenber, my home used 25% less energy than an "Efficient" Home according to Duke Energy.  Damn right!

So yesterday I got a fancy document in the mail from Duke Energy that was my "home energy report" for the year.  I had to share since it indicated that my home is "among the most efficient in your areas and is the envy of your neighbors".  Well, duh...yeah!  As it shows in the pic above for December 2014 alone, my house was 25% more efficient than Duke's "Efficient Home". 

My Energy Usage over the last year.  I'm the yellow line way below the "average" home (blue) and the "efficient" home (green)

They also included a nice graph of my energy usage over the year compared to an "average" home and an "efficient home".  My house is WAYYY below the average home (50-60% less?) and is well below the "efficient home" (25-40% less?).  Maybe Duke needs to revise their definition of an "efficient home"! 

Water Heater Woes

Go figure, as soon as it gets cold, then issues arise.  Recall that i have one of those fancy GE Geospring water heaters that use a low energy heat pump to heat my hot water.  To date, it's worked nearly flawlessly with the only hiccup being a Thanksgiving when I had so much family in the house, that my water heater couldn't keep up with demand in the "heat pump only" mode that I have my unit set on.  So I just changed the mode to be "hybrid" to allow the electric elements to kick-on and produce the extra hot water necessary for ~6 showers in the morning.  

My GE Geospring water heater in my crawl space

Well, all was great until just after Thanksgiving when I noticed I had a lot of energy usage.  Trying to troubleshoot led me down to the crawl space where I found a "FC" error code on the GeoSpring.  Thanks to the "Google", I found this this meant "Failed Compressor" and (apparently) it's not an unusual occurance via comments and blogs.  I went ahead and called GE customer service and scheduled an appointment for after the Holidays (I was traveling).  They mailed the parts to me ahead of time which included a bunch of new parts.  

On Monday, the guys arrived and they plugged in their laptop (when can I get one of those appliance communication modules?!?) and ran a test to verify that "Yup, the compressor is broken".  So they ripped out the old one and put in the new one while leaving me to scramble for PVC parts to reattached the drain piping.

Old Evaporator.  There's a surprising amount of rust here for something that isn't even 2 years old!

Pic i used to go to Lowe's where I picked up a union and a nipple to reattached the drain piping

So after they put everything back together, it appeared that everything was working.  The fan was running which indicated that the compressor was running producing hot water. 

Well, funny thing, the next day I was getting ready to feed the dog when I glanced over at the energy monitor and saw it using 6 kW.  Wow...that's a lot!  So I searched around the house.  Drying not running; upstairs heat off; downstairs heat off; Oven off...huh.  My wife was making some stuff in the toaster oven, but that's rinky-dink...only 1.5kW.  So I set off to the crawl space to check on the water heater.  Suspicious, I flipped the breaker and guess what?  The electric demand instantly dropped...bullseye!   Below is a screenshot of the power usage via the TED5000 and my phone.

Real-Time Energy Usage showing the water heater on...then off at the sudden drop.  And the pick-up when I flipped the breaker back on.

Once I verified, I flipped the breaker again and you can see the water heater heat pump turn on as it goes through its start-up cycle.  Huh...so why was the electric running when I had the unit set to "heat pump only"?  No idea.  So I just assumed it was a minor blip...I made sure the temp was set right and it was still on "heat pump only", then closed up the crawl space and went on my merry way.

Well, the next morning, my wife wakes me up to say, "there's no hot water".  WTH?!?  So at 5:30am I trudged down to the crawl space again.  No error codes present.  So I changed the mode to "hybrid" to enable the electric heat.  As soon as I hit enter, you can immediately hear the electric units turn on and hum.  And the energy monitor verified that the electric heating was on with an instant 4.5 kW bump in usage.  This got me annoyed...why was the heat pump not turning on???  I closed up the crawl space and checked the temperature and even after the crawl space door was open when I was checking the water heater, the temperature still registered 63F..no where near the 45F limit.  

So I broke down and called GE again to get my unit serviced.  After the troubleshooting guy argued with me about the crawl space temperature (I monitor it...trust me, I know it stays between 60-65 all year round...coldest ever was 58F), I got an appointment with a stern warning that if they don't find anything wrong with the unit, they'll charge me.  Since then I got a call from one of the service guys who I talked through what I saw (very nice gentlemen) and they suspect it's the control board.  So that's been ordered...and actually its on back-order...with a tentative appointment to replace it on the 20th.  I'm really hoping that'll fix it. Luckily, this is all no-cost to me since it's well within its 10-year warranty.  

Today's energy usage on TED.  Maybe that step around 5-6am is for the water heater?  After 7am is the dryer.  At ~8pm (19:00) the previous day you can see the water heater come on for the kiddo bath-time usage

This AM, I did try to check to see if the electric water heating was on, but I can't see it on the graphing which is odd  (maybe it is hidden in there around that 4.5-5KW area before 7am?).  Granted I didn't get the opportunity to go to the crawl space and check.  There was plenty of hot water this AM which was nice given that it was a frosty 11F outside (20F colder than yesterday).  

Anyway, we'll see if and how this gets resolved. It's a little annoying that this is happening to a fairly new unit.