Energy Matters Forums

[Tracker]

Tarriffs here are ...Peak: 0.295...Off peak: 0.167

Boy are we being ripped off here in Sydney.. Peak 40c, Shoulder 20c and Off-Peak 8c.
The worst part is that despite Govt. Claims that you can do it, changing rates is near impossible for most..

BUT - It does give very good incentive to vary usage to take advantage of the .. 8c...

Thinking about the SALINE blocks.. Would it not be nice to be able to buy something like a Wine-Cask bladder, but made from a super-tough material (Butyl-Rubber-Pond-Liner???), that could sit flat on a freezer-shelf and never be punctured..! Two or three (15cm deep) on each of the top shelves, under the goods.. I must try it with actual Wine Cask Bladders..

BTW - I still like the two thermostat idea for the freezer, to completely ensure it NEVER goes below 15c..
What type of freezer did you end up with..
A frost-Free, or one that you have to occasionally defrost.
One with a simple knob-type temperature control or a rotten electronic control.

The problem for MOST mortals is that they can't cheaply re-design a freezer.. I could, but I am not normal, just ask the bride, or anyone here ..

Big Problem - Re-Designing the Freezer WILL void the warranty -- So the best that you could achieve is to buy a noisy Freezer Alarm.. and use it as a warning that the temp has reached (say) 15c -- at which point you might choose to manually turn it from Time-Control, to ON..
OR
You would set the freezer temp to MAX (about -25c) and run via a simple time clock to run during the OFF-PEAK periods -- You would add the freezer alarm, to warn if -15c was reached, and thus give you the chance to switch to MANUAL and prevent it's getting any warmer..
IF - you found that it sometimes went into alarm, you could set a daily ""BOOST"" time of perhaps 20Mins, during the PEAK time -- Just to tide-you-over...

Only remaining thought is that the LOWER the temperature, the greater the "LEAKAGE" and hence the lower the efficiency of the device..
You will notice a problem on saturated summer days, when there MAY be WET patches on the freezer..
I just turned on an older MAYTAG fridge/Freezer, and the DOOR skin gets wet on those humid days..
..
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[Gordon-Loomberah]

I think that most of our energy usage during the day is by the freezer

How much power are you using each day in total? It is hard to imagine the freezer would be using more than 1 or 2kWh/day, unless it is really big, or has a leaky seal on the door.
You can buy power meters to monitor individual appliances to see exactly what they are using, it may be worthwhile for you to buy one if you cant account for all your power use. By noting the accumulated use in morning and evening, you can get an idea of how much the freezer is costing to run through the day and overnight. Turning it off or down during the day would increase the night time use a bit, but you would probably still be ahead financially.

[Tracker]

It is hard to imagine the freezer would be using more than 1 or 2kWh/day

Probably about 2 and up to three at worst case..

You can buy power meters to monitor individual appliances

ALDI have them on special at this very time.. Most strange that they are not selling..
I have found them VERY useful..
They cost me a new fridge..
The MAIN fridge (nearly 40yo) used 5 units a day..
It lasted as long as it took to empty...
..
.

[Gordon-Loomberah]

We were given a huge 480l freezer with a slighly wonky lid recently- a bit of weight on one corner fixes the lid. Its full of chook feed, to prevent weevils eating it. It's outside on the veranda in the heat, the sun shines on it a bit in the mornings too, but it still only uses about 1.5 kWh/day. Dunno what you have to do to make a household sized freezer use 3kWh/day!

Did you try adding insulation to that old fridge before retiring it?

[Smurf1976]

Reading another forum (Whirlpool) reveals that connecting chest freezers to Tariff 33 in Queensland is reasonably common. This is on for 18 hours per day and appliances must be hard wired.

[Tracker]

Dunno what you have to do to make a household sized freezer use 3kWh/day!

Three would be really bad.. and I am referring to UPRIGHT freezers, not those things you can fall into..

Did you try adding insulation to that old fridge before retiring it?

No, sorry, but insulation was not the issue.. It was the number of Electric-Heaters used to make certain cold bits, not so cold.. ie. door-mullion heaters. Air-Vent heaters etc. etc.
The fridge was a 2Door-Side-by-Side monstrosity, that after re-cycling, likely built a new house..

I must admit that I have oft' thought about getting a BIG chest freezer, and most preferably , one with an external condenser, and use it for those DEEP frozen foods you want to last a long time..
I AGREE, that a chest freezer could be readily connected to the O/P circuit.. (Provided the Kidz were not in it all day looking for ice-blocks
... I have been thinking UPRIGHT freezers..

and appliances must be hard wired.

Don't know about this... Is this a technical limitation for connection to an Off-Peak circuit..?
(without thinking about it) It seems rather silly.. What does it matter if there is a GPO on the Off-Peak Cct.
You can only draw power when it turned ON.. What is their strange reasoning..?
..
.

[Smurf1976]

and appliances must be hard wired.

Don't know about this... Is this a technical limitation for connection to an Off-Peak circuit..?
(without thinking about it) It seems rather silly.. What does it matter if there is a GPO on the Off-Peak Cct.
You can only draw power when it turned ON.. What is their strange reasoning..?

Best explained by saying that off peak GPO's (power points) were legal and very common in Tasmania until the early 1980's (many homes that have not been re-wired since then still have them).

I remember it well as a kid. The off-peak went off at 4:30 in the afternoon, so we just "switched over" the radiator by plugging it into a normal power point. Then at 8pm when the off-peak came back on, it was plugged back into the off-peak. Lots of people did it, and there's still a few doing it today. Most limited it to heating appliances and clothes dryers, but I've heard of it being done with just about everything in the house by some who really wanted to save $.

That does, of course, completely defeat the purpose of off-peak and turns it into nothing more than a discount. There's zero reduction in peak demand if people simply pull the plug out of one GPO and plug it into another one as soon as the off-peak is switched off.

Most commonly, there was one outlet in the lounge room and one in the hallway but some had them in bedrooms (common) and laundries (less common) as well. The official thinking went along the lines of an off-peak storage heater being installed in the hallway, and the use of plug-in radiator in the lounge when the off-peak was on rather than using the oil heater (oil burning heater) that were very commonly installed in Tas homes at the time.

That idea never really caught on when oil was cheap since the small saving in costs wasn't worth the hassle. But once the oil price shot up, people quickly adopted the idea of cheap off-peak power for a radiator but they used peak rate as well since that was now cheaper than oil and this was widely known. This was to the extent that heating oil use in Tas dropped literally 60% in the space of a year and never went back up. Some went back to open fires, others installed slow combustion heaters, others did the off peak / peak thing with portable radiators. Shortly after this, the installation of off-peak GPO's was banned.

My mother's house still has an off-peak GPO in every bedroom plus one in the lounge room (literally right next to a normal GPO and conveniently located for a portable heater...) and another one in the kitchen for the dishwasher. The house was built in 1978 just as heating oil was starting to go out of fashion and the last year before the big price spike (the house never had an oil heater but some others in the area were built with them installed).The hot water is on off-peak also.