Brand new system and baffled with energy usage

[JJBTXModS]

I just installed a new solar and PW+ system at my home in TX. I am set up with excellent sun exposure and am generating 120-130 KWH per day (love the TX sun). I also have 4 PW (two of them PW+). I have 2 ACs (4 ton and 1.5 ton I believe) and a variable speed pool pump as the main power users. There are 2 refrigerator/freezers as well in the house. Nothing really more aside from the typical smart devices, tvs etc.... I seem to be pulling a lot of KW all day and night which seemed odd. The PW are discharging quickly as the lowest I am "pulling" is 6-7KW. At night I may get lower than that as we sleep and the Temp goes down. This means that the 4PW are discharging quickly (I am not load shedding or anything) as a main test this week. I know if I plug in the car it will be drawing 17KW or so.

I traveled this weekend and kept the temp in the house at 80 degrees on the AC with nobody at the house. I still was drawing some high power. I know I get confused on the whole KW vs. KWh.

What is the best way to identify what us being the main power hog?

Also, the way the new app is set up, I am drawing off of the PWs every day cycling after sun goes down. Will this degrade them or lower their life. Should I just set them for backup power and not cycle (defeats part of the purpose). I now find myself checking the app more than anything else but something seems amiss or we the house really sucks insulation wise (Which I am sure it does)

Thoughts?

 

[Laketime]

AC's suck a ton of juice. Plus- what setting is your pool pump on? I run my Hayward variable on 2 but when I crank it to 4 it spikes the power consumption.

 

[JJBTXModS]

Pump is set on variable except for 2 hours during the day (and solar) on speed 4. Today (home on normal schedule) the 4PW drained to 30% (my setting) in about 3-4 hours In the late afternoon.

 

[MCNE]

I just installed a new solar and PW+ system at my home in TX. I am set up with excellent sun exposure and am generating 120-130 KWH per day (love the TX sun). I also have 4 PW (two of them PW+). I have 2 ACs (4 ton and 1.5 ton I believe) and a variable speed pool pump as the main power users. There are 2 refrigerator/freezers as well in the house. Nothing really more aside from the typical smart devices, tvs etc.... I seem to be pulling a lot of KW all day and night which seemed odd. The PW are discharging quickly as the lowest I am "pulling" is 6-7KW. At night I may get lower than that as we sleep and the Temp goes down. This means that the 4PW are discharging quickly (I am not load shedding or anything) as a main test this week. I know if I plug in the car it will be drawing 17KW or so.

I traveled this weekend and kept the temp in the house at 80 degrees on the AC with nobody at the house. I still was drawing some high power. I know I get confused on the whole KW vs. KWh.

What is the best way to identify what us being the main power hog?

Also, the way the new app is set up, I am drawing off of the PWs every day cycling after sun goes down. Will this degrade them or lower their life. Should I just set them for backup power and not cycle (defeats part of the purpose). I now find myself checking the app more than anything else but something seems amiss or we the house really sucks insulation wise (Which I am sure it does)

Thoughts?

I had to go through some education on what it really meant when my AC unit came on and was drawing 2800 watts. My home also in Texas was using a ton of electricity compared to others our size. Like over 20,000 kWh per yr.

One thing that helped me was the Sense Energy monitoring device that was recommended on this forum. When coupled with a few Kasa smart plugs you can really get a feel for what’s drawing power. It’s not perfect but pretty darn good. I can see things like how often my water heater cycles and daily consumption of the range, AC unit. Much better tool than we have from Tesla in my opinion. Plus I have it on the same cycle with my electric billing and can check or compare usage daily with the online app. At the end of the day we just use a lot of electricity for a family of 3 .

 

[kairojya]

Before my install, I didn’t have any insight into our energy consumption beyond our monthly electric bill. I found our traditional electric water heater to be a surprising energy hog. I found the daily home graph in the Tesla app made it clear to see how often our air conditioning system was running, and what kind of power it uses (2.8 kW). My household’s typical shower and dish washing routine will eat through 20% of our 2 Powerwalls’ energy. Our A/C is using some of that too but a large portion of it is just from our water heater.

If you connect to your gateway (this is applicable if you have a Powerwall+ too) following the docs, you can see the loads from the meters (home, grid, solar, Powerwall) updated at a higher frequency. It’s practically real time. Then you can turn on/off various loads in your house and get an idea for what power the home is using while each thing is running. Note that you can access the gateway from within your home’s network if you know its IP address, you don’t need to direct wifi connect to it.

Connecting to Tesla Gateway and Powerwall+ | Tesla Support

If you lose internet or cellular connection, view instructions on how you can monitor your system’s power flow and charge level via web browser by connecting to your Gateway or Powerwall+.

www.tesla.com

Like MCNE was saying, you could go many different routes for monitoring loads. For example, I plan to get an Ecobee thermostat because I’ll have insight into when our air conditioning compressor is running. I can then overlay that data in a graph with my solar/Powerwall data.

 

[EVRider-FL]

In our home, the pool pump doesn’t draw a lot of power. Charging the cars is the biggest draw, followed by the AC. As long as I’m not charging, the 10.56 kW solar system (limited to 7.6 kW AC by the inverter) can generate more than enough for house loads on a sunny day (south FL).

 

[JJBTXModS]

EV, Our solar can definitely produce more than enough to power the house during the day and charge the 4 PW in quick order as well as "Sell to the grid". Problem is that after sun is out, and we use the PWs, they may last maybe 4 hours under normal use (up to 30% reserve). This is without charging the cars. We seem to be pulling 6+KW minimum at all times. Looking at our usage (per the Tesla App) we used 150.6KWh yesterday which seems to be average. The home used 118KWh when we were out of town and the AC was set at 78-80. Again seems high to me with just the AC, Pump and Fridge etc... Water Heating is Gas.

 

[brkaus]

You’re going to have to dig in. If you are comfortable around electricity, a current meter on each of the breakers now and then may give a hint.

Power meter plugs & turning breakers off also work.

fridges & freezers can be big users. computer equipment too.

do you have hot water recirculating pump?

i found silly stuff like the ceiling fan controllers took way more than I expected, even when the fan was off.

 

[holeydonut]

You’re going to have to dig in. If you are comfortable around electricity, a current meter on each of the breakers now and then may give a hint.

Power meter plugs & turning breakers off also work.

fridges & freezers can be big users. computer equipment too.

do you have hot water recirculating pump?

i found silly stuff like the ceiling fan controllers took way more than I expected, even when the fan was off.

I posted about the Emporia Vue a while back. I agree it’s Really useful to see the energy use by appliance / circuit

Emporia Vue is an Interesting Companion to Solar and Powerwalls

I'm not sure what is the forum policy around this, but hopefully this post isn't considered a schill-type of thing since I'm not affiliated with the vendor. The Tesla app is great to see the balance of the grid, solar, battery, and home consumption, but it doesn't provide much insight to what...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[JJBTXModS]

You’re going to have to dig in. If you are comfortable around electricity, a current meter on each of the breakers now and then may give a hint.

Power meter plugs & turning breakers off also work.

fridges & freezers can be big users. computer equipment too.

do you have hot water recirculating pump?

i found silly stuff like the ceiling fan controllers took way more than I expected, even when the fan was off.

Now that you mention it, yes I have a small recirc for the hot water that is on 100% of the time.

I am not comfortable around electricity even though I am an engineer (mechanical). I will figure something out. Thanks for the reply.

 

[jboy210]

EV, Our solar can definitely produce more than enough to power the house during the day and charge the 4 PW in quick order as well as "Sell to the grid". Problem is that after sun is out, and we use the PWs, they may last maybe 4 hours under normal use (up to 30% reserve). This is without charging the cars. We seem to be pulling 6+KW minimum at all times. Looking at our usage (per the Tesla App) we used 150.6KWh yesterday which seems to be average. The home used 118KWh when we were out of town and the AC was set at 78-80. Again seems high to me with just the AC, Pump and Fridge etc... Water Heating is Gas.

Pools and A/C use a lot of power. We have a property in Austin with a pool and the electric bills are huge in comparison to here in Northern California. The Austin home runs the A/C constantly all summer, and in Tri-Valley in NorCal we run it 6 hours or less a week most of the summer with temp set to 79-80 which is fine because of low humidity. Luckily power is cheap in Austin.

 

[h2ofun]

EV, Our solar can definitely produce more than enough to power the house during the day and charge the 4 PW in quick order as well as "Sell to the grid". Problem is that after sun is out, and we use the PWs, they may last maybe 4 hours under normal use (up to 30% reserve). This is without charging the cars. We seem to be pulling 6+KW minimum at all times. Looking at our usage (per the Tesla App) we used 150.6KWh yesterday which seems to be average. The home used 118KWh when we were out of town and the AC was set at 78-80. Again seems high to me with just the AC, Pump and Fridge etc... Water Heating is Gas.

Most folks have no idea how much power things take, like AC, electric dryer, EV charge, pool pump, etc. Technically, my input to folks is if you are on a NEM plan,
by far the best choice to get as much solar as one can, IMO, the batteries have no real ROI. Now, if one does not have a NEM plan, things change a little. But yep, I had my AC set at 72 but wife said a little cold, so just changed to 74. I have enough solar that I can basically do whatever I want, yea

 

[brkaus]

Now that you mention it, yes I have a small recirc for the hot water that is on 100% of the time.

I am not comfortable around electricity even though I am an engineer (mechanical). I will figure something out. Thanks for the reply.

turn off the recirc pump for 48 hours. Do you have electric hot water? I’m paying another $30/mo into a combination of the pump and the extra heat going into the slab with recirculating pump on based in my measurements.

And definitely don’t mess with the circuits if your not familiar/ comfortable.

 

[aesculus]

IMO, the batteries have no real ROI

Well the PSPS avoidance is big and getting bigger. Where you are you should know that.

But more importantly is the time value of energy. If you have the right rate plan you can make some pretty good money on the sell back of peak solar energy when your house is essentially not consuming because of the batteries. And many of us our hopeful in the near term (see the new VPP option for a small example) where in the future you will be able to sell any amount of your daily generated solar back during whatever time you want. So this would avoid the utility paying you nothing because everyone is generating solar when the sun shines, and you can defer deliver via the battery until it as more value.

 

[SVDNN]

Everything relative, but here are some examples of power draws from our house when they are on:
AC 8-9kWh ( 5ton older unit, prob SEER8-10), sporadically use in summer of west SF Bay Area
Electric clothes dryer 9-10 kWh (new Samsung with all bells and whistles)
EV 10kWh (by far biggest draw overall for us in total kWh over time)
Electric oven 4-5 kWh
Pool pump 2-3kWh

Otherwise, lowest baseline use is 1.4 kWh at night (4 refrigerators, several TVs & computers, extensive landscape LED lighting)

Hope that helps

 

[h2ofun]

Well the PSPS avoidance is big and getting bigger. Where you are you should know that.

But more importantly is the time value of energy. If you have the right rate plan you can make some pretty good money on the sell back of peak solar energy when your house is essentially not consuming because of the batteries. And many of us our hopeful in the near term (see the new VPP option for a small example) where in the future you will be able to sell any amount of your daily generated solar back during whatever time you want. So this would avoid the utility paying you nothing because everyone is generating solar when the sun shines, and you can defer deliver via the battery until it as more value.

Other than 3 years ago, we have basically had no real PSPS's, and may never again. . Most folks do not have the money for batteries, let alone solar. But if one does, great. I just have seen any real value to have the batteries, just a lot more hassles. And my generator is always ready for the few times power has gone out.

 

[DHevey]

EV, Our solar can definitely produce more than enough to power the house during the day and charge the 4 PW in quick order as well as "Sell to the grid". Problem is that after sun is out, and we use the PWs, they may last maybe 4 hours under normal use (up to 30% reserve). This is without charging the cars. We seem to be pulling 6+KW minimum at all times. Looking at our usage (per the Tesla App) we used 150.6KWh yesterday which seems to be average. The home used 118KWh when we were out of town and the AC was set at 78-80. Again seems high to me with just the AC, Pump and Fridge etc... Water Heating is Gas.

I think you're correct that your usage is higher than it should be. 150 kWh in one day is very high, even with pool and AC. How often is your pool pump running? I run mine about 7 hours a day this time of year, and reduce that somewhat during the winter. Do you have a separate cleaner pump?

In comparison, I have a 3700 sq. ft. home in SC, with a pool, and when I'm out of town in the summer, my home uses around 40kWh per day. When I'm home, my consumption in August might peak around 130 kWh in a single day, but generally averages around 90 kWh. I would focus on the constant 6+ kW consumption, because that seems to be two or three times as much as it should be.

 

[JJBTXModS]

I agree. Time to start shutting things off this weekend to see what is going on. We also habe a septic system but I don’t think that draws too much. Something seems to be off here.

 

[Infinus]

Do you mind sharing screenshots of your energy usage graphs?

 

[JJBTXModS]

Do you mind sharing screenshots of your energy usage graphs?

Sure, here are some samples. Sunday I was out of town and ac was @ 78 or so. I also think I discharge 4 powerwalls to 30% in a very short time (4 hours or so). Seems very quick to me. This is week 1 so I am playing with it to try and understand