Water Heater Woes Continues...

OK...so recall a little while ago (cue the Scooby-Doo music and squiggly lines), I was having some issues with my GE Geospring Heat Pump Water Heater.  Well on Friday last week, the back-ordered control board finally arrive and week later (yesterday), the GE repair guys showed up and installed it.  As a fun note, the water heater was showing the dreaded "FC/F14" (failed compressor) error when I opened up the crawl space before the guys arrived.

Well, go figure, today I'm getting ready to feed the dog while my wife was showering and I noticed on the energy monitor that the energy usage was sky-high.  Well, what the heck!  I checked and the downstairs heat was on...OK...that's about 2.5 kW (Stage 2).  The upstairs heat was not on.  And then while looking around I heard her hair dryer come on...that's about 1.5kW.  So I checked TED and this is what I saw the following:

Morning Power Usage.  The ~2.5kW is the heat.  The final blip is a hair dryer.  The big jump is the water heater.

 Huh...there' a huge roughly 5kW jump...so the electric element is on the water heater again!  WTH?!?  Didn't those guys fix that yesterday?!?

Well, at this point I can't do any more investigation because I needed to cook breakfast for the family. In case you're wondering, it was waffles.  And yes, they were awesome.

So after cooking and cleaning up I checked on the water heater.  While doing dishes, I did run over to the corner of the house and listen and I could hear the heat pump working.  Well that's good!

After I had finished cleaning, everything I checked the power monitor and *$%&$%, the electric heating element was on again!  Well, now I was free to check on everything.  Below is my series of pictures where I made sure everything was off.  There was no heat on, upstairs or downstairs.  The dryer wasn't running.  We weren't cooking or baking.  And nothing else was running (fridge, freezer, kegerator).  I also checked the temperature in the crawl space...and it was a healthy 59F.

TED5000 showing my energy usage

Temperatures.  Upper is Indoor.  Lower is Crawl Space.  Ignore the time, I've never set it.

Downstairs heat is not running.

Upstairs heat is not running either

Geospring showing it in Heat Pump Only Mode.

While down in the crawl space checking the water heater and taking the above picture you could hear the a click which I'm guessing was the electric elements turning off.  I verified it with the below pictures...

Yup, all heating (air and water) is off. 

Below is the TED screenshot.  You can see the event described earlier (~6:30am) with the hair dryer peak.  And then there's cooking breakfast followed by doing the dishes.  Then everything turns off while we eat followed by the final water heater peak when I was doing this investigation.

TED5000 energy monitor

So I'm going to try an experiment.  I relocated my weather monitor right next to the Geospring.  Not to say it was much further away...maybe 10-15-ft, but now it's only about 1-ft away.  And it is also right next to the crawl space door.  This should be the coldest it should ever read, if for some reason, air is getting through the insulated and weatherstripped door.  It happens, so I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt although one would think that if it were significant enough, I'd see huge fluctuation in the temperature in my entire crawl space...which I do not see.

Geospring with the weather (temp/humidity) monitor now located beside the water heater.  The door is about 3-ft away.

Looking at the monitor now, it is showing a lower temperature...53F instead of 59F.  Then again, I did just have the crawl space door open while I went inside to grab the weather station, then move it over and position it (it didn't want to stand up so I had to put it on its side), and then take the picture.  And even with that, it's still nearly 8F higher than the minimum temp.  So I'm overly surprised that the temperature it lower. 

Either way, I'm going leave this here for a while to see if the temperature drops to below the 45F threshold where it overrides the heat pump and goes to electric.  I *highly* doubt this is the case, but I can at least rule it out.  I'll keep y'all posted.  Otherwise, I guess I'll have to call GE repair again to get them over to figure out why this thing keeps running the electric heat. 

December Bill, No November?, Overall: Still doing OK

Happy Holidays!  Merry Christmas!  Happy Hanukkah!  

(Insert any other holiday you wish to celebrate)

My daughter wonders what Santa is going to bring her for Christmas...

If you've been keeping track, you may be saying..."uhh December?  What happened to November?"  Well...for some reason Duke Energy did not send me a bill.  And I cannot find my November information online except for what Duke wants to bill me.  It's as if November never existed.  Unfortunately, Duke Energy would not take the actual dollar value of the bill and make that disappear too.  In any event in the lack of actual data, I'll post what my TED5000 unit says I did.  So...without further ado...below my November and December usage data.

November 2012  (Oct 2 - Nov 1)

Energy Consumed = 509 kWh

Billing Days = 30

Average Daily Usage = 16.97 kWh/day  (Ranks as #5 best month ever) 

Heating/Cooling Degree Days = 217

Weather Normalized Usage = 2.35 kWh/HD

Bill =$58.14

November 2013  (Oct 2 - Nov 2)  <--TED5000 setup to always be 2nd to 2nd
Energy Consumed = 651 kWh
Billing Days = 31
Average Daily Usage = 21.0 kWh/day  (24% increase in usage)
Heating/Cooling Degree Days = 191 (minus 15 days where there were <5 CDD/HDD)
Weather Normalized Usage = 1.76 kWh/HD
Bill =$64.02 (from Duke Energy.  TED Estimate = $78.19).

Based on the Bill amount, I'm guessing TED was WAY off.  At $0.11/kWh, my usage should be in the neighborhood of 560 kWh comparing to 2012.  That's a 20% error.  If you compare October's Bill, TED says I used 746 kWh while my Bill said I used 595 kWh which adjusts up to 664 kWh adjusting for the bill having 28 days and TED having 31 days.  So TED is about 15-20% off on those two months.

December 2012  (Nov 1- Dec 3)

Energy Consumed = 970 kWh

Billing Days = 32

Average Daily Usage = 30.31 kWh/day

Heating/Cooling Degree Days = 533

Weather Normalized Usage = 1.82 kWh/HD

Bill =$98.52

December 2013  (Oct 28 - Dec 1)  <-- Back to Duke Energy Billing Cycle 
Energy Consumed = 951 kWh
Energy Produced = 45 kWh  <--Panels energized midday 11/4, but not producing fully until midday 11/11.
Net Energy Consumed = 906 kWh
Billing Days = 34
Average Daily Usage = 26.65 kWh/day  (12.1% reduction from 2012)
Heating/Cooling Degree Days = 530
Weather Normalized Usage = 1.71 kWh/HD
Bill =$96.66

The good news here is that without factoring in the solar panels, I used less energy in 2013 than I did in 2012.  And that's with roughly the same Heating Degree Days.   Including the energy I generated, easily puts me at well below my 2012 usage by ~12%.   So far this month, according to TED, I'm on a similar pace to be just right around my 2012 consumption without the solar panels.  Apparently, the weather has been similar to last year also.  Through yesterday, the preliminary weather data is showing we've used 310 HDDs or 17.22 HD/day.  Extrapolating to 32 days, we're on pace for 551 HDDs compared to 533 in 2012.