Power consumption and what we can do to reduce it

[Lajos_Detari]

Just some sharing...

I saw in the news that more and more people are beginning to use solar power due to the high cost of electricity.
But the solar panels and the installations are not cheap.
I guess you will have to ensure that the solar panels can benefits your "whole" house for you to get back your money.
If you want to DIY the installations, ensure that you fully understand and do a proper installations since solar power carry high voltage and power which can cause electric shocks and fire if not properly installed.

Appliances that consume the most power are usually the heating and cooling appliances such as the water heater, refrigerators, air conditioners (for both hot and cold air), etc.
Other appliances and equipment probably may not consume much energy in my opinion.
All LED televisions are require to consume less than 1W when in standby mode.
Many years ago when I was a design engineer for power circuits, I was shocked to find out one of the television models was consuming almost 10W when in standby mode. LOL

For fish tanks, I think the heater, chiller and the higher power LED lightings that are use for planted tanks consume the most power.
Nowadays, I only have one planted tank for the shrimps which is using higher power LED lighting.
For my fish tanks, I remove all plants to reduce the hassle of maintaining the plants and it also save me on electric bills as I don't need to turn on the LED lights for 8-10 hours per day. I only need to turn on the light during feeding as my tanks are near the windows.

If you live in a tropical country, then you don't have to use a heater which will save you some energy.
But you will need a chiller if you keep marine corals, fish and Caridina shrimps.
Neocaridina shrimps probably may not need a chiller.

 

[GaryE]

Just some sharing...


If you live in a tropical country, then you don't have to use a heater which will save you some energy.
But you will need a chiller if you keep marine corals, fish and Caridina shrimps.
Neocaridina shrimps probably may not need a chiller.

It's interesting for me to read this, as in my northern climate, the costs of fishtanks are very much buried in the over-all costs of heating in winter. I heat the room my fish are in, but I heat quite a few rooms that I'm in, and housing here is designed for energy retention. I am in the process of changing all the windows in my place (it'll be done by lunch after 2 days of guys working in here), and we put almost a metre of insulation in the attic over the room my fish are in. Even though the weather patterns these past few days have shown summer is coming soon, we live in an awareness that summer is just when winter's gone out for a pee. The house heat is off, but it'll be on again in October.

I go with the assumption a house will be around 18-21 degrees except in the hottest days, but being on forums that are international, I've learned people in warmer climates often have cooler houses for periods of the year. Because they don't face extremes, why prepare for them the way we do here?

Although this seems to horrify Australians, I have a lot of Anubias in my tanks. Cryptocorynes, Bolbitis, mosses and java ferns too. What they have in common is an ability to thrive under lower lighting than the standard cuttings in pet stores. I also select my fish carefully, and minimize the number of warmer water tropicals here (even if I like them). I choose tropical fish from canopy covered rainforest, that can thrive at 20. I'm not a one tank aquarist - I have a large set up so I have to think in terms of economizing. But I also have fish I really like and enjoy.

The hobby doesn't cater to my tastes, so I have to make an effort to find my fish and plants. That's kind of fun - like looking for heirloom variety plants for the garden or such. Japanese friends have told me how species offerings in stores changed after the nuclear disaster/tsunami there, when electricity supply became difficult. They've said medakas are really in because they're survivors. I wonder if places where energy costs are spiking will look at countries where costs are still under control and long for the old fashioned tropical tetras and Cichlids of days of yore? I have old books from times before good central heating where the species available are different from now - will those fish make a comeback?

 

[Lynnzer]

Without going into each device's power needs just yet, I also run a computer, a printer and 2 TV monitors on the same circuitry. So as i'm obviously not able to run these on anything less than mains power of 240V I guess putting together a setup would demand output of 240v from the solar system.
I think I'll have a word with a local electrician for safety sake.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

The council who own my flat added 8 solar panels to the roof of one building per road that has council residential properties, including the road that I live on

Those panels run all the courtesy lights inside the buildings, all the courtesy lights outside the buildings and the street lights in the road. My road has 14 buildings with a total of 56 flats, 72 internal and 80 external courtesy lights and 10 large streetlights in my road.

We residents actually asked why they didn't convert all the flats to solar so that we could take advantage of the service. They didn't respond.

Don't forget that when using solar, it will charge up in cloudy weather and wet weather and as a bonus will put any unused energy back into the grid and your grid company will pay you for that....where I am its Northern Powergrid and they pay the council a handsome sum annually for unused power from the solar panels.

 

[Uberhoust]

Napkin calcs (Canadian currency):

Don't know your tank setup but consider 2 55 gallon tanks.
Heating 2 X 300 watts with a 6 hour duty cycle - 3600 watt hours (this is a guess on the duty cycle)
Lighting 2 x 45 watts with a 10 hour duty cycle - 900 watt hours
Pump/Filter 2 X 40 watts with a 24 hour duty cycle - 1920 watt hours

Total 6420 watt hours (just for now lets use 6000)

6 hours of sunlight a day, is pretty optimistic, you therefore need 1000 watt hours per hour (rounded down) using rigid monocrystal panels at $1 per watt.
- 10 100 watt panels ($1000.00) (40" x 20" or there abouts)
- 5 200 watt panels

Unfortunately, you need to store the power for when the sun is not shining. A typical 100 ah LiFePo battery (similar to a car battery) produces 1200 watt hours.
- 5 batteries ($5000.0 with LiFePo BMS type batteries) you might be able to half this cost with battery selection (actually need 6 for a buffer)
- 10 deep cycle lead acid batteries ($2500.00) - though they only last 1/4 the time

You will also need a 1000 watt inverter and a charge controller for the batteries (guess $1000.00)

Overall it is a fair amount of gear and money ($7000), and the system might be not quite large enough. Good sourcing with cheaper batteries that don't have BMS(Battery Management System) would reduce the cost but would require more knowledge on the charge controller. I did not include connectors and wires.

You wouldn't want to link to the mains as this would require building and electrical permits and special equipment to interface with the mains, so this discussion would be for totally isolated system. Though you could move the plug from your solar system to your mains system.

If you could drop the heating requirements you could drop the power in half.

 

[emeraldking]

With a high number of tanks and with all an individual mechanical filter system and each an individual heater, the electrical bill can increase a lot. And yes, using solar panels is more effective when you have a low number of tanks. But in my case, I would need a lot of those solar panels, if you know what the output of one panel is.
This is one of the reasons why I use air filtered tanks. And we've got a central heating system in the house which we can regulate. And our house is insulated. That will put the bill down.