geyser timer???or not

[IMHO]

AndyD, as always, thanks for your valuable input!

[Ralf]

Just an update there is an analogue timer available that is brilliant and only costs about R 170, installation takes about 15 minutes and my personal savings with three geysers of 250, 200 and 150 liters each in electricity costs per month comes to about R 1000.00 and I have the bills to prove it.
The beauty of these little timers is that they can have so many settings on different times, different days or just complete or partial weeks and at the price even if one burns out every six months I still save a fortune.

[tec0]

Upon installing a device that shows me my power usage per hour and my bill accumulating I became very aware of what uses power in my house and what doesn’t. Now a lot of people say your refrigeration units eats power I found this to be untrue as they only consume at maximum 350watts of power for 30 min "as needed" I actually did find that they will consume close to no power at all for hours before taking up the 350 watts.

Secondly I stopped using the oven and got myself one of those energy efficient cookers and it works like a charm. Now my food gets cooked "Family of 3" for less than 1hour it only consumes 1Kwatt at a time. Now your oven depending on how you used it will cook the same meal with 2+Kwatt and it takes normally more than 1 hour.

Turning your water-heater on 60min before use and leave it on for 4 hours "till everyone is finished" and turning it off again makes a massive difference. Upon turning it on it consumes 3.2Kwatts of power "As needed" when you turn it off the water remains warm till the next day.

Now other considerations are your microwave and kettle. Now fact is my microwave consumes "depending on its stetting" up to 2Kwatt of power for about 30min but with a bit of planning ahead will decrease the need for your microwave.... "I got it down to zero use"

My kettle my word it just sucks power at nearly 2.2Kwatts!!! Now you can boil half a kettle or a full one it doesn’t matter it uses the same amount of energy and the difference in time is not that significant. So I restricted myself to only 2 cups a day and yes it did nearly killed me but it shows a massive saving"

Now in total I manage to cut my power bill with more than half. So it is possible to do. Sad part is when we see that power warning on TV not long after we are without power and that just sucks because regardless of the fact that we saved energy we still get punished…

I don’t like timers they are not worth the money, rather just set your phone to remind you each day to turn the damn thing on and then off again it just works…

[Martinco]

Maids for some unknown reason, only use the one tap marked with a red indicator for everything they wash including just washing their hands.

Sorry girls.......but this seems to be a common thing with the female gender !

Another appliance that can be blamed is the tumble drier. Instead of hanging the washing out to dry, we just slip it into the tumble drier because is is much easier and you do not even have to leave the house/flat to do this.

[Martinco]

In a few extension in Lenasia, City Power have installed geyser timers unilaterally and made it clear that it is compulsory. This timer next to your db board switches the geyser on or off automatically during certain times. Whilst, I stand to be corrected, it appears that these timers can be controlled by radio frequency and thereby also allow them to switch it off remotely for extended periods if and when they see the need...

These devices are "ripple relays" and the purpose of these is that the municipality can regulate their maximum demand from Eskom and yes........they do get switched on and off by means of radio frequency induced into the power lines by the municipality and also yes...........they are compulsory in many municipalities. If you look closely at the relay you can even see the frequency used to do the switching.

The downside of these relays is that the relay is normally off at the most inconvenient time and sometimes the mun. even "forget" to turn them on again.

[wynn]

My kettle my word it just sucks power at nearly 2.2Kwatts!!! Now you can boil half a kettle or a full one it doesn’t matter it uses the same amount of energy and the difference in time is not that significant. So I restricted myself to only 2 cups a day and yes it did nearly killed me but it shows a massive saving"

Unless you are drinking tea, which requires boiling water, if you boil a full kettle for your first cuppa and pour the excess into a thermos flask, you can have a few more cups of java than two in a day

there are atractive jug flasks that do a god job.

[AndyD]

Just an update there is an analogue timer available that is brilliant and only costs about R 170, installation takes about 15 minutes and my personal savings with three geysers of 250, 200 and 150 liters each in electricity costs per month comes to about R 1000.00 and I have the bills to prove it.
The beauty of these little timers is that they can have so many settings on different times, different days or just complete or partial weeks and at the price even if one burns out every six months I still save a fortune.

If you're installing a timer on a 200litre cylinder I would be very careful about using makes and models in the lower price bracket. There's a lot of R170.00 timers around that aren't capable of reliably switching a 4KW element even though they are rated to 16A which is only marginally less than a 4Kw linear load.

[kleva]

I can see a new Paper 1 question

How much electricity can the consumer save if supplied by a 10000/230V at a power factor of 95% if:
1 x 150l kW Water Heater
12 x Energy saving 15W globes
Etc

He he

[murdock]

the geyser is a resitive load ...so it has a PF of 1 = 100%

the lamps however...being such a small load wouldnt really make an impact...even though i am yet to find one with a better PF than 0.25 ie 25 % efficency...tested with a fluke 435 PQA...i know from previous posts...someone did mention that you do get energy savers with a better PF.

my concern is the 500 million (just a wild guess) energy saver lamps being given away by eskom...what PF they have and what effect it has on the main grid...the question is...did eskom do a proper survey on the impact...millions of these energy efficient lamps would have on their system....considering all the other electronic devises being plugged into the system as modern technology booms...and did they take into account for harmonics...will there be penalties introduced in the future...like toll roads to make more money out of us...to cover up for their lack of planning.

it sounds like we will be paying for their inefficencies once again...thru increased water accounts to the tune of i think they mentioned 500 billion rand.

[AndyD]

someone did mention that you do get energy savers with a better PF. my concern is the 500 million (just a wild guess) energy saver lamps being given away by eskom...what PF they have and what effect it has on the main grid...

Many of the newer generation of compact fluorescents have built-in PF correction.....to a point at least. Cheap nasty normal tube type fluorescent fittings are probably the worst culprit for poor PF.

the question is...did eskom do a proper survey on the impact...millions of these energy efficient lamps would have on their system....considering all the other electronic devises being plugged into the system as modern technology booms...and did they take into account for harmonics...

Switch mode power supply units are the scum of electrical demand management. They're dirty, filthy things with poor power factor and they produce large harmonics especially in the triplen range which cause increased neutral loads. These things are used in just about every home or office computer, they're also in laptop chargers, cellphone chargers....the list is endless. These SMPS's are a major cause of unnecessary load on the electrical supply system.

will there be penalties introduced in the future...like toll roads to make more money out of us...to cover up for their lack of planning.

it sounds like we will be paying for their inefficencies once again...thru increased water accounts to the tune of i think they mentioned 500 billion rand.

The easiest way to penalise customers for poor power factor is to use smart metering and make KVAr the billing unit instead of Kilowatt hours.

[Bob Innes]

Geyser timers: I have found prices that vary from R240.00 for an entry level device to more than a R1000.00 for upmarket devices. I have had an "el cheapo" on my geyser for some years now, and have through instrumentation proved a saving of about 23% on geyser power only - for a house of two. Savings are of course totally dependant on the "on-off" cycle times that you decide upon. So I reackon it has been worth my while. An interesting Eskom project, go to Google and type in "Eskom's Residential Mass Roll-out" - this is an extremely interesting power conservation project, with freebies and rebates from Eskom.
Remember, if you have any electrical power saving devices fitted in your house, be cognisant of the fact that they should be SABS approved, or have IEC certification - furthermore they must be installed by a licenced electrician and you must demand a COC (Certificate of Compliance) saying that the installation complies the recommended wiring code. Otherwise in event of an insurance claim you will be in trouble.

[AndyD]

Remember, if you have any electrical power saving devices fitted in your house, be cognisant of the fact that they should be SABS approved, or have IEC certification - furthermore they must be installed by a licenced electrician and you must demand a COC (Certificate of Compliance) saying that the installation complies the recommended wiring code. Otherwise in event of an insurance claim you will be in trouble.

This is good advice but sometimes a hot water timer might not fall under the COC depending how and where it's installed.

[Bob Innes]

All noted, AndyD, are you saying that a qualified spark is not necessary, or are you saying that a COC is not necessary depending on where the timer is located and wired? Would like to know more.

[IMHO]

Right, here is my headache. Any sugestions, with brand names of equipment to employ?

House 1





House 2

[AndyD]

...are you saying that a qualified spark is not necessary, or are you saying that a COC is not necessary depending on where the timer is located and wired?...

The timer would be required to be installed by a competent person.

If for example the timer is installed in an enclosure that is secured to the cylinder itself with a very short cable between the enclosure and the cylinder element then the timer would be considered an integral part of the geyser and wouldn't necessarily fall under the scope of a COC.
If the timer was installed in the DB then it would fall under the scope of the COC and a certificate would need to be issued specifically for its installation.

@IMHO^^^

The installation at both premises is a shambles. I would rip it out and start again.

• No earth bonding visible on any cylinders
• Internal PVC cable used externally in view of the sun
• No spreg between the isolators and the cylinders (maybe the horozontal one does but it looks broken plus it's PVC in sunshine)
• Isolators inadequately IP rated
• Cabes un-secured
• Cables run in close proximity to or even strapped to hot water pipes
• No pipes fitted to the hot water safety valves (hope no kids play in this area)
• Looks like there might be a vac valve or two missing
• No trays installed under cylinders
• Some pipework insulation wouldn't go amiss but this isn't a legal issue.
• A couple of the cylinders have limescale streaks down them which is a sign or water leaks.

There's probably a few more things if I had time to study the pics properly.