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Remote start could be very useful if you want to maximize self-consumption for your solar panels. Do they support that?
by tralarpa 3y ago
Remote start could be very useful if you want to maximize self-consumption for your solar panels. Do they support that?
- londons_explore 3y agoDishwashers aren't very solar-friendly if you don't have net-metering. They typically have a very powerful 2.5 kilowatt heater they run in bursts - for like 5 mins when prewashing, for like 10 mins when starting the main wash, and like 10 mins again when drying. In between those times, the machine uses only ~60 watts for pumps. I have often pondered what a world of machines designed to meet solar output looked like - and for a dishwasher it would involve the heater being modulated to match the solar output (and knowing that sometimes the wash cycle would take longer if a cloud was overhead so heating was delayed by a half hour).
- nicoburns 3y agoI guess you could also use a small battery to help smooth things out.
- londons_explore 3y agoThe money efficiency isn't great - if you had control of the design of the dishwasher, simply having a hot block of concrete inside that you heated when there was spare energy would work out far cheaper. Concrete costs far fewer $$$'s than batteries do, per kwh of heat stored, it also doesn't require inverters, balancing or safety systems, ad lasts millions of cycles rather than thousands.
- usrusr 3y agoHow expensive would it be, transportation included, compared to an insulated water container of comparable heat capacity?
- goodpoint 3y agoOr maybe store hot water and heat it up at the best time...?
- marcosdumay 3y agoThe water is too hot to store safely. You can still slowly heat it up to 70 or 80°C and just add some extra heat on use, but that will still leave a lot of immediate power to deal with.
- notatoad 3y agoI can't imagine a scenario where you've got a large enough solar system that you'd want to be running a dishwasher off it, and you don't already have some battery storage elsewhere in that system.
- solraph 3y agoWaves from Australia However, since my array is currently 4.4kw at 3 in the afternoon, a 2.5kw burst isn't a problem.
- usrusr 3y agoJust have more dishwashers, and use them as storage cabinets: pick from a clean cabinet if you need tableware, deposit in a dirty cabinet when you are done and if you have at least three of them the transition is free to take a lot of time.
- pdntspa 3y agoThat sort of thing seems solvable with batteries used as a a capacitor, rather than trying to reprogram the dishwasher logic
- michaelt 3y agoI tried to do things like this in my home. It turns out for washers, dryers and dishwashers you should just set a timer to start at noon. Once you've started an appliance on a cycle it's going to keep running, even if the sun goes behind a cloud. So you don't need to start it when the instantaneous solar power is at its highest, you need to start it when the predicted next two hours of solar power are at their highest. And it turns out you don't need complex monitoring to figure that out.
- planb 3y agoThat's exactly what I'm using this for. I have a home assistant automation that starts the washing machine when the daily solar peak power (as estimated by a web service for my location) is reached. Of course, I have to prepare everything in the morning. On sunny or even just bright days, no grid power is used.
- mrweasel 3y agoNo, not out of the box. They don't really support any automation, you can build something using Home Assistant or If This Then That, but now we're already past what I care to manage. There isn't even HomeKit integration (which I noticed is a trend, Google Home will be supported, but not HomeKit).