How to calculate the electrical cost of running a tank.

It's like you mentioned everything I'm doing. Will look into insulating tanks.

 

Hmmm seems like the shredding has taken out all history and cost accumulation on the power meter.



Will probably have to open the unit and replace the battery or wires something external up to it.


Later Ferdie

 

@Zoom. Nice one. My 450l will cost approximately R219.32 in winter and R96.56 in summer as we don't need any heaters in Nelspruit during the summer months.

2 x 300w heaters
1 x 8w air pump
2 x 38w canister filters
70w worth of lights

Thanks for the info. It gives you a good estimation of what your tanks electrical consumption will be...

 

Has anyone tried using Emergency Mylar Thermal Blankets on tanks? Was thinking on using something like that to cover my tanks at night and when I am not there during the day...
[h=1][/h]

 

hmm - re-configured the meter - decided to pretend we are working on proposed cost so about R1.60kWh





Seems like I am in for the high-jump, pulling around 680 watts avg during the day. And with a 10 hour light plus heater cycle behind me, looking at a cost of R6.5k per year on fish room power. This calls for drastic measures.

Later Ferdie

 

An average braai with meat, drinks + mix, snacks, charcoal, wood etc costs more at one shot that the R525 p/m the tanks would cost. Makes you wonder?

 

Exactly.

One thing I never do is try to justify/quantify the fun factor of my hobbies (fish, scuba - expensive rebreather stuff, dual sport and off-road bikes) in Rands and Cents.

My hobbies are = PRICELESS.

 

@Caz, yes I have... it works

 

Thanks @MariaS, might save some money in the long run and help during load shedding....

 

I upgraded my power monitoring tools in April - and actually track the entire homes consumption.

Since I added the 4 heaters in the fishroom beginning of June ... I can clearly see an increase in avg power consumption.


Above - day avg. So about 33% more power is used in the entire house at the moment vs the low consumption in April.

But I can also see the benefit of having some tanks on heaters ... avg temp for the room and for tanks without heaters are a bit more stable.



Lucky13 has a 300watt heater ... rock solid.



- top 3ft tank has no heater




Later Ferdie

 

After many years - this is what I currently use:

For total house power, the efergy unit with the remote clamp measures things. The signal is intercepted with a raspberry and a SDR usb stick. The data is then logged and plotted in Domoticz.

For Fishroom power, a single Sonoff POW is used, the custom flashed device is also reporting to Domoticz.

Using a single tool to consolidate the information on helps with a standard compare.

Below the cost over the last few years:








Only started with the sonoff in 2017





I cross check the cost every few months with my actual bill. The deviation is well within 10% so I am ok with the timing assumption made in this process.


If you can not measure it you can not fix it ...

Later Ferdie

 

Thanks for sharing @f-fish its also good to see the comparison over the years. What is your plan to reduce this? Or is there going to be one? For your number of tanks running are u happy with this level of consumption? Have a great day!

 

As long as the entire house bill stays under block 1




very little action is needed.

Saving power can actually cost you more in the end ;-)

Later Ferdie