Martin Lorton just released the second part of his video series called "How to Solar Power your Home" and it is, like
the first episode, very instructive; He goes into details on home electrical appliances
energy consumption and tell us how to reduce them before looking into the sizing of your future
solar system ...
How to make your home more energy efficient ready for solar power. Solar geysers, heat pumps, efficient pool pumps, LED lighting...and more...
Martin starts by writing down the Power used by each appliance in his home and multiplies it by the duration it operates => that gives the Energy used; Adding all the appliances energy consumptions, he gets the overall energy usage
Then he goes around the house to show us what he did to save energy, and here in the kitchen shows LED lighting that has replaces the regular fluorescent lights that were used before => 3 times more efficient
Then, outisde, his pool pump has been replaced by a more efficient and programmable one, running most of the time in economy mode, saving energy, and sometimes turning faster
Then onto the roof, he add installed a solar geyser - solar water heater - that is gving hot water for free in summer for 5 months, and that needs supplement of heat brought by the heating element in other seasons, especially winter
This solar geyser has also a programmable control unit / display panel
After all this, he returns to his office, and shows us, on the paper agin, the energy savings applied to each appliance, and the overall energy use reduced by more than half ! This is for sure where everybody has to start before considering a solar system
To measure instant power, current, and energy on an appliance, it is good to use this cheap Kill A Watt meter that will show you all these figures and help you see what is going on in your house
