Insane Electric Rate Increase $508.68/1522 kWh

I wonder if the dryer setting makes much of a difference in terms of overall energy required to dry a load. That is, are you just using a lower rate of energy (say, half as much) for double the time? (It’s possible that higher heat would be more efficient, as it’d reduce the time spent tumbling clothes.) I’m not sure on this, just some food for thought.

This is something I need to actually monitor. Based on the limited observations and without taking into account the differences in loads (not every load can be dried at the same rate, given a set temperature and time). However, I have noticed that the medium setting runs for most of the hour it's set at, even with the moisture setting at the midpoint. I have dried clothes many times on the lowest setting for at or less than 1.5 hrs and the clothes were also dry.

I'm assuming the blower and roller use significantly less power running longer at a lower heat than a higher heat for a shorter period of time. In each case, the majority of the heat is literally blown outside and wasted. The small amount that goes to the basement also doesn't help much, since it's unoccupied. Unfortunately, I don't have a way to monitor the 220V-powered dryer. The cable is also not split, so using a clamp-on ammeter isn't possible, although I might be able to find a way to do that or maybe reach out to Samsung or elsewhere to see if I can figure this out.

Along the same vein, the washer is 110V, so I'm going to use a watt meter to determine how much energy is saved using the express wash I like to use compared to the longer setting (roughly double the time, IIRC) my wife typically uses. Unlike my fridges, freezer, and dehumidifiers, a single full load of similar items for each cycle should give very quick results.
 
That sounds like your AC unit is undersized for the room. For comparison we have a 1.5hp split in a large bedroom about 16x20 with 9 foot ceilings. I think the BTU is around 12,000.
No, it's oversized for a warm day so it's not running enough to remove the humidity. We just run a 6k btu window AC for the whole house, and while it can't maintain 72F when its 90F for a few days in a row, it does keep the humidity low enough at 76F inside to be comfortable.
 
Just wait until "everyone has an EV" and is sucking juice like crazy from the electrical grid. All I can say is they better figure out a way to separate EV charging power used at home from the rest of the house use power, and charge that accordingly - not make everyone pay increased electrical rates even if they don't charge an EV at home.
 
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I think some folks have confusion about the meaning of relative humidity. Let’s start with that. Relative humidity is a measure (expressed as a percentage) of the actual moisture content in the air compared to the maximum it could hold. When it reaches 100% we call that raining.

The capacity of air to hold water is highly, highly dependent on the air temperature. Higher summer temperature air can hold significantly more moisture then winter cold temperature air. Let’s say a given volume of air at 90F could hold 100 ounces of water but it actually is holding 50 ounces. That would get reported as a 50% relative humidity on the weather map. Now that same volume of air at winter 20F temperature could hold 10 ounces of water but is actually holding 5 ounces of water - same 50% relative humidity but note the difference of 45 ounces of water summer v winter.

Lets take this further and move that 20F 50% relative humidity air volume and bring it inside the house through cracks in windows or whatever and let’s heat it to say 70F. The ability of that 70F air volume to hold moisture is say 80 ounces of water if at 100% relative humidity. But this air only contains 5 ounces of water (see previous paragraph) so now the homeowner experiences a humidity of 5/80 or 6.25% humidity. That’s why people humidify indoor air in the winter. This is why operating DEhumidifiers in the winter is a waste of energy. Want the waste heat they generate? just plug in a heater and be done with it.

If you want to follow a number then track dew point and the temperature - dew point spread. Topic for another time….

For now here is an easy humidity measurement device for the winter months - put a glass of ice water on the counter. If the outside of the glass stays dry with say 30ish F water in the glass then you do not have a humidity problem.

That's a pretty good explanation, but I'm not sure it's so cut and dry. It could be that running a heater to increase the moisture capacity of the space by increasing the bulk temperature would save money compared to using a dehumidifier. You may very well be right; I need to do more research, but I don't agree with you just yet. Besides, at the moment I'd have to run multiple space heaters to maintain the large basement at a high enough temperature to lower RH consistently < 50%.

I know you were simplifying the relationship between temperature and humidity, which is relative humidity (RH), to make a point. What I don't know is how much water is actually entering the space and how it affects the saturation vapor pressure, as well as how much energy is required, taking into account the heat flux to outside due to the larger temperature difference (Q-dot at 60F is higher than 50F if the ambient is less than 50F). The space is not perfectly sealed, so figuring out whether heating the space to lower RH or running a dehumidifier is more efficient.

For your argument, we're assuming that the vapor pressure does not change a significant amount or very little compared to the saturation vapor pressure. The rise in temperature raises the saturation vapor pressure with very little assumed change in vapor pressure from moisture entering the space, resulting in a substantial differential in the two vapor pressures. I don't know how to determine what temperature needs to be maintained to account for moisture in-leakage to obtain RH SAT.

For what I'm doing, the heat from the dehumidifier can be assumed to be insignificant, so the temperature is maintained relatively constant while the vapor pressure is reduced relative to an assumed constant saturation vapor pressure for the given temperature and pressure. As before, water entering the space will raise the vapor pressure and the dehumidifier will need to run periodically to remove that moisture, whereas it would not need to run at all or substantially less than at a higher temperature and lower saturation vapor pressure.

The question is how to solve this. Variables:

1. Moisture in-leakage and evaporation rate at two relative temperatures, and the effect on vapor pressure
-This will change wildly based on outside RH (water entering the space vai air in-leakage) and liquid water in-leakage (through the concrete due to rain and etc.
- As I mentioned and you noted, RH humidity is sometimes low in colder weather, so on days where 50F would still result in < 50% RH with the dehumidifier off, an increase in space temperature > 50F would be a waste of energy.
2. Energy required over time by a space heater(s) to maintain appropriate temperature to lower the RH sufficiently with a higher heat loss to outside
3. Energy required to remove moisture from the air by dehumidifier for same with lower heat loss to outside
-For 2 and 3, the difference is affected by the insulation of the house

Based on what some of you have posted, I need to determine at what temperature and RH mold is really a concern. For now, anecdotally, the basement smells musty, even at these temperatures, if the RH is greater than 50% for an extended period of time. Lots of variables there, too, of course, so it's hard to determine an actual correlation and exact RH vs temperature, at least for me.
 
That sounds like your AC unit is undersized for the room. For comparison we have a 1.5hp split in a large bedroom about 16x20 with 9 foot ceilings. I think the BTU is around 12,000.

I think it's the opposite. The need to run a dehumidifier seems to be less than when we were using a 10K unit. Unless I'm thinking about this wrongly, the larger unit cooled the air a lot quicker, but with less contact time of air onto the evaporator to adequately condense out the water vapor. The smaller unit has a lower flow rate and runs longer for a given temperature, so more water vapor is condensed over time.
 
That's a pretty good explanation, but I'm not sure it's so cut and dry. It could be that running a heater to increase the moisture capacity of the space by increasing the bulk temperature would save money compared to using a dehumidifier.

Probably not. Most of the energy used by your dehumidifier becomes heat in the end anyway.
 
In AC mode they can slow the indoor fan speed down for better dehumidification. So can my Trane air handler. I bought a humidistat for the purpose of connecting it to the Trane air handler so it could slow the fan down during periods of high indoor humidity, but it hasn't been a problem so I never hooked it up.

If you're using a window unit and you can control the fan speed, try running it at the lowest fan speed and see if that helps.

That's a good point about window AC units and fan speed. What I forgot to include in my response to PimTac was that we do just that, lower fan speed to maximize contact time of air across the evaporator. We us a ceiling fan to distribute the conditioned air, as necessary.

My work has half-splits that work really well and are REALLY quiet. My two concerns are that the whirring noise is not very pleasing, where window unit fans are lower-pitched and closer to a brown noise or something. Also, the drainage for the units seems to never stay clean. The clear tubing is pretty black with what I assume is black mold. With that said, these are never flushed or anything. Every few months a crew comes in and cleans the filters in soapy water and sprays something onto the evap coils, but it's not much.
 
Do the blower and roller actually slow down when running at lower heat? They don't on my dryer, but it's 20 years old.

Nope, same speed. I just meant that the actual energy used over 1.5 hrs and low heat is likely less than same energy consumed by the roller AND a higher heat over, say, an hour.

So, 50% more roller time, but how much less actually energy is blown out the duct?
 
Probably not. Most of the energy used by your dehumidifier becomes heat in the end anyway.

Yea, the joke in thermo classes way back when and even today in engineering: assume the world away. Ideal gasses, closed systems, a specific efficiency, insulation, etc. As some point, you get into choosing variables that may wildly affect the answer. Look at climate science. Ok, forget that one. I don't want to get this thread locked!
 
...

Assuming one hour of cooking with that one burner each day (or 30 minutes of cooking with 2 burners, or 15 minutes with 4 burners), 100 gallons would last almost 2.5 years.

You probably won't use your stove that much...
Thanks for your input. I think I left out that possibly the tankless water heater is too. I have to find out. We plan on checking out the house this weekend. Not that we could have picked out a worse weekend with intense rain the day before.
Pretty much your posts have confirmed how much LP we will use and the site agent was being truthful. He thought maybe once a year based on I THINK we also have hot water LP. I'll know more, either way I am no longer freaked out about it. I mean the builder did this as an upgrade, Im sure it would have been cheaper to go all electric.
 
That's a pretty good explanation, but I'm not sure it's so cut and dry. It could be that running a heater to increase the moisture capacity of the space by increasing the bulk temperature would save money compared to using a dehumidifier. You may very well be right; I need to do more research, but I don't agree with you just yet. Besides, at the moment I'd have to run multiple space heaters to maintain the large basement at a high enough temperature to lower RH consistently < 50%.

I know you were simplifying the relationship between temperature and humidity, which is relative humidity (RH), to make a point. What I don't know is how much water is actually entering the space and how it affects the saturation vapor pressure, as well as how much energy is required, taking into account the heat flux to outside due to the larger temperature difference (Q-dot at 60F is higher than 50F if the ambient is less than 50F). The space is not perfectly sealed, so figuring out whether heating the space to lower RH or running a dehumidifier is more efficient.

For your argument, we're assuming that the vapor pressure does not change a significant amount or very little compared to the saturation vapor pressure. The rise in temperature raises the saturation vapor pressure with very little assumed change in vapor pressure from moisture entering the space, resulting in a substantial differential in the two vapor pressures. I don't know how to determine what temperature needs to be maintained to account for moisture in-leakage to obtain RH SAT.

For what I'm doing, the heat from the dehumidifier can be assumed to be insignificant, so the temperature is maintained relatively constant while the vapor pressure is reduced relative to an assumed constant saturation vapor pressure for the given temperature and pressure. As before, water entering the space will raise the vapor pressure and the dehumidifier will need to run periodically to remove that moisture, whereas it would not need to run at all or substantially less than at a higher temperature and lower saturation vapor pressure.

The question is how to solve this. Variables:

1. Moisture in-leakage and evaporation rate at two relative temperatures, and the effect on vapor pressure
-This will change wildly based on outside RH (water entering the space vai air in-leakage) and liquid water in-leakage (through the concrete due to rain and etc.
- As I mentioned and you noted, RH humidity is sometimes low in colder weather, so on days where 50F would still result in < 50% RH with the dehumidifier off, an increase in space temperature > 50F would be a waste of energy.
2. Energy required over time by a space heater(s) to maintain appropriate temperature to lower the RH sufficiently with a higher heat loss to outside
3. Energy required to remove moisture from the air by dehumidifier for same with lower heat loss to outside
-For 2 and 3, the difference is affected by the insulation of the house

Based on what some of you have posted, I need to determine at what temperature and RH mold is really a concern. For now, anecdotally, the basement smells musty, even at these temperatures, if the RH is greater than 50% for an extended period of time. Lots of variables there, too, of course, so it's hard to determine an actual correlation and exact RH vs temperature, at least for me.
I designed oil heated chemical reactors and oil heated vacuum distillation columns for 40 years for a living. I tried to keep it simple here so a non-engineer and others here could benefit from the discussion and could grasp the basic concept. In this reply you sound like an engineer of some sort which makes me wonder why the confusion about the simultaneous thermodynamic mass transfer and energy balance equations required to do the calculation correctly. I could, but won’t, do the calculations because they are frankly not required to make a correct decision.

We started off trying to save energy and now it’s about basement mold remediation. You seem to want all the i’s dotted and t’ees crossed so you can move forward. “Analysis paralysis” we used to call it. My opinion is you are overthinking it. But the “it“ seems to be a moving target…

Do the glass of ice water test I suggested and let us know if a big puddle of water forms under the glass after a few hours.
 
I live in the Green Mountains of Vermont at over 2200 feet above sea level. Winter air is cold and dry, with low dew points. We have to humidify in winter. If we did not, the relative humidity in the house would fall to under 10 percent, drying out ourselves and our woodwork.

I am not sure why some people need to dehumidify in winter. Water intrusion to the basement? We have a Canadian made air exchange system which we use to draw stale air from bathrooms. It provides some air exchange to the entire house. As the house foundation is carved out of the granite rock the house is built on, (we had to blast to make a cellar hole) I wanted air exchange to eliminate any possible radon gas from the earth.
 
Thanks for that. A buddy has propane heat (furnace) and the price you're paying sounds similar to what he was paying. He did say it came down this year compared to last year.

I haven't looked into it in a while, but I thought that renting a tank meant that you had to buy propane from that company, and that owning it/them would potentially save money in the long run. I'm not even sure of how many suppliers there are around me, so that might be a moot point.

A funny anecdote: my old condo had a gas hot water heater. Soon after we moved in we had a power outage. My wife and I took quick showers because we thought the heater would eventually cool down to the point where showers would be uncomfortably cold. Well, I was down in the basement later and heard the burner kick on and had a :unsure: moment before realizing that this thing was old-school with a pilot light, so no power was needed. We still didn't have the furnace for obvious reasons.
Ya renting is scheme I am sure and in the long run I'd want to just purchase the tank. That is unfortunately how it works with NG. You could use maybe $15 in the summer but with all the taxes and fees lined up for the privilege of being able to use it. That bill is now $40 but the better part is they are relatively flat fees so the more I use in the winter doesn't alter them. That's the cost for always having a full gas line.

Ya one of the reason I am hesitant to switch to a forced induction style unit. Having hot water independent of the electric grid is a nice feature but now that I bought a massive generator that is really a moot point as well especially with the 25-45min showers my teens take. :cautious:
 
Saw this ad and immediately thought of this thread.
 

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