| > I'd love to be able to put a wet load of laundry into my drier and press "make sure it's dry by tomorrow morning". So, I do a bit of this myself, manually. I've got a table of appliances and wattages, both rated and measured (using a Kill-O-Watt). I also have a 6kW (max) solar panel installation, plus I'm on a time-of-day metered plan. I try to make sure that anything that uses hot water (tankless full electric water heater; 29kW rated max) like the dishwasher and shower are done between 1000 and 1400, as that's the highest time of solar insolation during the day, plus the time of day turns over to the highest tier at 1400. I've bought but not yet installed an eMonPi (https://github.com/openenergymonitor/emonpi), so theoretically I could automate some things to optimize when to run devices. As it is though, by tracking and actively trying to reduce consumption, I've already managed to keep my electricity bill to zero for years, even putting thousands of USD back into the grid (sadly, I do not get money back from this; it only counts as credit, and resets every twelve months). As for your specific example, I line dry my laundry. I don't see the point of running a space heater (dryer) in my garage; it usually only takes a few hours to dry where I live anyway. The only reason I still have a dryer is for down sleeping bags and coats that have to be fluffed up. |