Holy Electricity Bill, Batman!

[hollywoodfrodo]

So, during construction I was concerned about the cost of water for the initial fill of the pool. As it turns out, that was relatively cheap. What I should have been concerned about was the cost of running the pump for the first month.

Our PB had us run it on high 24/7 for the first 10 days which I'm sure was the biggest cost, but then we also ran it on high a good number of days for several weeks after due to lots of gunk from ongoing construction getting in the pool and stuff.

And of course it's summer so our central a/c is running all the time. Our previous month bill was around $120. This month's bill was around $400!!! We even got a separate notice from SoCal Edison basically asking if we needed help managing electricity or if we had recently installed medical equipment at our house.

I'm assuming now that we run our pump about 7 hours a day on a much lower setting (1600 I think) and then about 3-4 hours on a higher setting for the robo-vacuum, our next bill will be much lower - it better be!

Anybody have any tips on how you've set up your pump to maximize effect (cleaning and SWG chlorine producing) but reduce the costs?

 

[mknauss]

What rpm is needed to satisfy your SWCG? Lower the rpm until the SWCG flow light turns red, then add 100 rpm and set your base rpm to that.

Do you need to run the cleaner every day? With an ET, you can just set it to run every other day if you wish. Eventually you may want to consider a robot that does not need the pool pump and uses very little electricity.

Be sure to schedule your pump time around any high rate times of day for your electricity. What time of day the pump runs is not critical.

 

[Divin Dave]

Yup.
Running constantly at high speed will flat out suck up some juice.

I run my 3 HP intelliflo at 1500 RPM and at that speed, it uses about 190 watts. I live in Texas so im sure my juice is cheaper than your does in CA, but for what its worth, it cost me roughly 22 dollars a month, and I run my pump 24/7

 

[sktn77a]

Yep, a 3HP pump running full speed 24/7 is going to cost about $300 a month! We just had our pool renovated in December and I elected not to close it and run the pump 24/7 to prevent freezing. Cost me roughly $140 a month for a 1 HP single speed pump. Now I'm running it 12/7 but looking into getting a 2 speed pump which will run on low except when cleaning.

You seem to have it figured out. You will run your pump slower and for shorter intervals after the initial setup is complete (cleaning, chemical stabilization, plaster stabilization).

Keep a close eye on that chemistry for the first few months and buy plenty of muriatic acid!

 

[Richard320]

I have a primitive single speed pump. I run it two hours a day, plus some extra when I'm vacuuming. I also have central AC, and my last SCE bill was the highest I've ever gotten -- $200. Without the AC, it's generally $65-75 and I don't have a time-of-use plan.

Run the pump as low as you can to close the SWG flow switch reliably, and then only long enough to generate enough FC. The SWG won't care if it runs 50% for 10 hours or 100% for 5, but your wallet will.

 

[Neemer]

I’m running mine (single speed) anywhere from 8-14 hr/day. As best as I can determine, it’s costing me about $130/mo to do that.

 

[shrid]

My bill was $303 last month and my pool isn't even turned on or filled yet however it eas super hot last month. I'm normally in the 150 range. Im in Texas btw.

 

[AimeeH]

I'm pretty sure we have some of the higher rates compared to others nationally here in SC. (Edit by Jim R.)

Our pool electricity costs run about $135 a month in season for a single speed motor with SWG. I'm fairly spot on with this as it is on a meter separate from our house meter. The only things on the second meter are the pool and the well pump.

 

[Household6]

In NC and I run our single stage pump 24/7 (switch is in a pump house and takes a contortionist to get to).

When we bought the house 9 years ago it used $80 per month of electricity.

House has been a rental for 8 of those 9 years (we just moved back in during July).

Now, it’s more like $125/m. Couple that with our AC being toast and having to run portable and window units 24/7 to make things bearable (until we save up for the $9k replacement) and we have electric bills of $400+ per month. <GAG!>

But hey! We have nice clear water in the pool to cool off in!

 

[Costas > DownUnder]

Pump current (power) draw is never linear mainly due to the fact that flow is not a linear function.

At higher flow rates, to double the flow your pump needs to use up more than double its power.

Here is a quick pic of my pump's power consumption - you can see that below about 1500 RPM power consumption is reasonably linear but then it starts to rise exponentially at the higher speeds/flow rates.

You can see why we don't want to run our VS pumps at high RPM's 24/7 unless we are specifically requiring that level of flow for a specific purpose (floor vacuuming etc).

 

[Rancho Cost-a-Lotta]

Hollywood,

It may be worth checking out the Rate Comparison Tool on the SCE website. The tool will utilize your last year of usage data to determine if a Time of Use plan would save you money over a conventional tiered rate plan. Generally, if you can limit energy use between 2pm-8pm you may be able to achieve savings. The image below shows the variance in rates by time of day for the TOU plan I'm on. I run my pump at night when energy costs are at their lowest.

 

[santacruzpool]

I am able to run my pump at a very low 1000 rpm and it works fine with our Jandy SWCG - I tend to run the pump when the sun is on the pool as that seems to gain the most heat as it keeps the hot top layer of water (under our safety cover) mixed...Right now it is running from 10 AM to 5 PM.

If I run the pump at night our pool ends up a few degrees cooler as a result. However, since we are 5+ hours north of you, and only a mile from the coast, I would bet that you won't be trying to trap as much heat as we are, so you could run your pump at night or earlier in the morning.

Much like you, the first month our pool was switched on we had a $275 bill - over $200 more than we had the year prior for PG&E electricity. I was quite surprised, but now that I am running at the lower RPM and managing the pump run time I hardly see a difference.

 

[hollywoodfrodo]

Thanks for all the input! We're running at 1800 RPMs for 7 hours a day and then at 2500 RPMs for 1 hour just 3 days a week for the vacuum. We should be getting our next bill soon so we'll see what the difference is - should definitely be lower. If it's still higher than I can stomach, might try lowering the speed and run time a little bit more.

 

[CA92807]

If you have a Smart Meter installed for your service, you can go to the SCE.COM site and configure your account to show your usage by month, day, or hour by hour, usually delayed by a day or two. This is really useful to track down surprise usage. There are several low cost devices that wirelessly connect to your meter to show real-time usage.

All CA power users will be migrated to Time of Usage billing over the next few years according to the PUC. The SCE rate comparison tool looks at your past bills and give you the best plan but it won't be useful when you just added a high demand item, like your pump.

I switched to TOU billing the first month it was available and along with a new variable speed pump, changing most of my lighting to LED and carefully scheduling our usage, I cut my power cost nearly in half.

 

[bgray9]

Getting on a good time of use rate can be a big help (though you have to take into account your A/C and other uses also). We're on a TOU rate and with our timer, we never run our pool pump on-peak, so we save a lot by running it off-peak. If we ran it on the regular, non-TOU rate we'd pay quite a bit more.

California electric rates are quite high in general, unfortunately for ratepayers.

 

[PoolGate]

See if you have a budget or bill smoothing plan. Our bill is the same every month. It also can't go up by more than I think 10% from month to month. So we never see an outrageous bill. You have to ask to get on this program though.