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A comment on Calgarians detail life with an electricity load limiter. Parent comment

Re:Calgarians detail life with an electricity load limiter by derekp7 on Monday March 21, 2022 @04:45PM (#30759469)
I was thinking of that, so I just signed into my ComEd account and brought up the last several days readings from the smart meter. This reports usage hourly, and most of the days didn't have any hour exceeding 1.5 - 1.6 kWh. I did see 2 separate hourly samples over the past 2 weeks that got to 1.9 kWh and another that hit 2.3 kWh for those two samples, but the rest of the days had a peak hour of less than 1.6.

But I just realized, that since I have gas heat (but an electric stove), the heating isn't included in this report. Not sure what the averages would look like if I had a heat pump, but I'm assuming it would be similar to the A/C peak in the summer which adds about .5 to 1 kWh.

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Re:Calgarians detail life with an electricity load limiter by rrobukef on Monday March 21, 2022 @05:36PM (#30760023)
Out of curiosity: what is the base load, and what is the load when cooking dinner?

HN already determined washer/dryers are out. Assuming you cook for 20 to 30 minutes, how much instantaneous load does this add?

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Re:Calgarians detail life with an electricity load limiter by gruez on Monday March 21, 2022 @05:59PM (#30760273)
Presumably top peak load is during dinner time. I think the story and/or other commenters have mentioned that 240V service isn't working either, so that excludes stoves. With that in mind the biggest load sources would probably be:

* furnace blower: 400W

* fridge: 300W

* microwave: 1000W

* toaster oven: 1200W

* slow cooker: "70-150 watts on LOW and 150-250 on HIGH"

* hot plate: 1500W

With these in mind, it's not hard to imagine how you can hit the 1800W limit when you're cooking. If you get unlucky and the furnace and fridge both decide to turn on at the same time, you only have 1100W available for other stuff. It's definitely very limiting, but at the same time it's also not something that would prevent you from cooking a healthy/cheap meal (eg. running a rice cooker + slow cooker)

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