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[another one]

How badly do you want to know how much engery your equipment uses? Here's 2 energy monitors that attach to your load center and monitor whole house power usage as well as individual circuits - like a pool pump. Cost about $200 plus installation.

http://www.etherbee.com/BrultechSampleSite/products/ECM1240/default.htm
http://www.theenergydetective.com/

 

[sschullo]

Steve,

First of all, lower the speed of a pump, say by half. You are right, of course, that the pump will have less electric demand. But that's not the point. If you lower the speed of a pump by half, you need to pump twice the number of hours to get the same daily flow. So, if the energy usage was only half, at half speed, you wouldn't gain any energy savings. But it doesn't work that way. Pumping at half speed, uses way less than half the energy, because you are not pushing water through the pipes as hard.

Hi Jeff,
Precisely my thinking when the installer instructed me on how to use the pump. Last Novemeber, I thought, wait a minute, if you run the pump at a slower speed, but have to kick the number of hours up to 10-12 hours, why did I buy this thing? But I had no evidence at the time as he just installed it so I would wait and see. Well, I waited and saw and you and the installer are right, you need to pump twice the number of hours to get the same daily flow. No evergy reduction combined with my solar production and salt water flow requirements.

We are going round and round on this.
Tomorrow I will call the installer to see if he still has my old motor and get some data. Also, I will call Pentiar to find out how to measure the KWH of the new pump. I will probably have to purchase a monitor. I do not have the state of the art monitoring system just the plain vanilla Jandy.

I would gladly have my old motor back but its too late for that. I have made many mistakes through the years, luckily, this mistake is not going to make a lasting negative impression. Mistakes are expected in order to learn.

Ill keep you posted when I talk to Pentiar tomorrow.
Steve

 

[ride525]

Steve,

Cut the pump flow in half, and the energy usage is cut a lot more than half. Here are a couple of numbers, both taken from my Intelliflo VF: 24 GPM, 268 watts -- 48 GPM, 980 watts. So, half the flow, but barely 1/4 the energy usage. And this comparison is on my VF pump, comparing your old 1.5 hp pump running at full speed, with IntelliFlo at about 1500 rpm should be an even bigger difference.

It's easy to measure the kw demand, if you have a smartmeter for your electric service at your home. If so, check the kw demand on the smartmeter a couple of times with the pump on and then with the pump off. The difference will be the kw demand of the pump. Get the difference two or three times to get a good number. Multiply that by number of hours the pump is running and you have daily kwh. You can get an idea of how low the kw demand is for your IntelliFlo. I'm guessing it's about 0.3 kw or so at 1500 rpm. And of course less at lower rpm. So if the pump is running ten hours at 0.3kw, that's 3 kwh per day (0.3 *10). Edit: You might want to check electric demand at the smartmeter when the sun is not shining on your solar panels, so no solar generation is going on.

Even if your pool installer does not still have your old pump, if you know what model it was, you could look up the specs online. Or even not knowing exact pump, get some kind of estimate for a 1.5 hp pump's energy usage (kw demand). (It's probably around 1.5kw or 2.0kw)

It's likely you are saving 50% of the kwh usage from your old pump. There maybe something else going on with your total electric usage and total bill, and your total solar generation, that is somewhat masking the energy savings (on your bill) from the Intelliflo. So if you can establish the energy usage for just the new pump, and a reasonable estimate for the old pump, you won't have all your other usage and generation in the mix.

Jeff