DIY ESS - Adjusting to Heat Pump Power Consumption while Heating the Apartment

Daily iPhone remote ESS follow up:

Shots of the 2 Wattson units, displaying Generated Power - Solar & ESS - on the left and Net Usage on the right, while our Daikin Heat Pump is heating up 

As a reminder, now in cold days, I use the Forced Charge Mode to charge the ESS at night when Electrcity is twice cheaper than during the day, and we use our stored Energy along with Solar during the day ... Capacity Shifting & Peak Shaving ... 

Here the heat pump is isung more and more Power - gradually - and the ESS is putting out more and more Power too, to compensate 

Heating stopped, and now the ESS will downgrade the Power Output 

And we are back to a Net Usage close to 0W - and slightly positive -

Graph details with Wattson Anywhere

Daikin Heat Pump Air Conditioning Big Maintenance

This morning, another visit included in my maintenance contract with the company that installed our Daikin Heat Pump back in 2008

It was a "big" maintenance said the technician when I saw him completely remove the internal units white plastic casing, times 5 units, checking, measuring, and cleaning everything

First time I see a technician do this ... and First time I see this bare units

Oops, this is the cause of a small leak during Air Conditioning mode in summer (not used a lot) and a water drain pipe cut in two : He realized that during the installation, technicians did use two pips instead of one to evacuate condensed water and linked them together with a small rigid tube inside: a small part of the water was leaking from there; He fixed this with two nylon straps tightly wrapped around each ending

His toolbox

After going downstairs to clean our bedroom unit, the technician came back up and asked me what these meters were - the Wattson units I have downstairs, in the stairs, and upstairs on the ESS -, so I explained everything along with the Solar on the roof and the ESS, opened the doors to show him the inside; He was very interested and I was happy to show him and talk about it :-) 

and the live graph that goes with it on the iPad

He then went on the roof to check the main/external unit that is mounted on an unused chimney stack 

and, since he was up there, I handed him a meter and asked if he could measure for me the South-East Side of the roof where I originally wanted to have most of the Uni-Solar PVL-68 Solar panels mounted: He said: 4 zinc roof pieces are 3.40m in length on either side of the roof access opening/window, so that means I could get 4 more PVL68 panels - since they measure only 3m long - and have them mounted there for additional Solar Power, and these ones would benefit from the best orientation ... to be continued ...

(The measured free and South located pieces of zinc roof are located on the right of this picture)

Heat pumps on walls, balconies, roofs, and chimney stacks in Marseille

I have a Daikin Heat Pump installed on one unused chimney stack on our building and it has been working well since 2008

I thought it was a rare installation, but not at all, as I discovered many like these in Marseille, during my last week of vacation there; It is in the south of France where the climate is warmer, so I guess most of them are actually air conditoning units 

DAIKIN Heat Pump yearly check up

Tuesday, we had our yearly Daikin heat pump check up, performed by the same company who did its installion back in 2008
With the rain, the technician decided not to go up on the roof and did not see the external main unit, and we will have to re-schedule an appointment for that part; He did clean & check the 5 internal units though, which is half of the job

Daikin Inverter Heat Pump on the building roof mounted on a chimney stack

My Daikin Inverter Heat Pump

In 2008 when we did major construction in our apartment, merging 3 small 1-bedroom into one big duplex 3-bedrooms, the heating systems had to be renewed: each apartment had its own natural gas heating system, and two out of three were more than 20 years old and really needed to be changed

That's when I looked into having an Inverter Heat Pump installed to replace all these individual systems

That was a good opportunity to change to a system that is clean and more flexible: it uses only elctricity (can be made from renewable sources like wind and solar), two thirds of the energy to heat up comes from the calories in the ambiant air, and it can heat up and cool too, and this room per room, pretty fast on top of it

I thought the best place to mount the main external unit was on the roof, onto a chimney stack (all chimney stacks are sealed because unused)

Discussing with a colleague who had done that, he told me that Daikin was a very good brand, with good reputation for the quality of their products

I contacted them in Paris and they gave me only two contractors in my district qualified by them to do the job; I contacted both and got two quotes, close to each other, and hired the one I liked best

They did great job in only one day and a half:

- They installed this exactly like I wanted: they used the chimney stack I told them to use, passed the cables and fluid conducts through the chimney stack and made them run in the attic, going down through the ceiling right on top of each unit, no piping is visible at all :-)

- And most important for me, nothing shows from the street, you have to look from above to see it

I had the gas supply cut off for good and was happy about it (gas prices are always going up, following petrol prices), and if natural pollutes less than coal, it's still not good for in my opinion

The external unit is securely mounted onto the chimney stack, on the most discret side (hidden from the street)

As I asked the cables and conducts are running down through & inside the chimney stack

Here is a view from the sky (taken by a plane)

We have 5 internal units, with the same capacity, one in each bedroom, and two in the dining room / family room that is much bigger than a bedroom

These units are independent from each other, meaning, I can turn on the heating in the dining room only, for example, closing the kids rooms, and use the energy to heat up only the room where I would spend the day alone if working from home during the week let's say. When the kids are back from school, we turn their room units back on. We usually stop the heating completely (all units off) when going to bed, because it would be a waste anyways; Then when we get up in the morning, I turn the heat on in the dining room only to have breakfast, and we go up from 16-17°C to 20°C in 10 or 15 minutes ! it is very quick, because the hot air is blowed everywhere and fills up the room fast

White on white, very discret, they open up to let the air in and out, their fan is very silent, and we no more  have radiators taking space on the walls

Upstairs in the dining room/family room

Downstairs in the master bedroom

This unit is practically invisible when you enter the room because hidden behind this leftover part of wall

Now the costs:
External unit was 5000 EUR
Each Internal unit was 1000 EUR
Labor & parts was 2500 EUR
Total was then 12,500 EUR, but an incentive on 50% of the External unit was credited back to me :-) so the whole system cost me 10,000 EUR => not bad at all I think :-) and now I am saving everyday ...