Lot of cash, and mass, and space, and maintenance in that thought. For a piddling 7 cents a KWH differential, not remotely worth it. I know a bit too much about that particular area since my new shop appears to be going to be off grid, given the nutty policies of the local power company. You'll never make back the money you could make in interest on what it costs you for all that. The only way that (and more) make sense for me is that what the power company wants for a hookup is astronomically more (for a piddling 700 feet or so, yet).
From here, the high-rate power is cheap, and the low rate power is unbelievably cheap.
Not necessarily so: last may, when junior moved into their first house, they bought a used NG clothes dryer even though there was no connection provided for it (gas furnace, water heater and fireplace). He asked the supply utility, and was informed that they would extend a line from the existing cluster of shut off valves for a charge of $200.00, or he could do it himself and they would inspect the installation (I don't think there was even an inspection charge, I may be wrong) and issue an inspection certificate. The end result being that he was complimented on doing things well above minimum standard. Why not install NG with a flex line and quick connect to a NG barbecue connection at your gas meter, assuming you already have NG service? Gerry :-)} London, Canada
Some of the deltas are considered instant like the winter morning peak starts at 6 am but 5:59 am is Off peak and they have a winter and summer power season
I'm thinking a PLC and some kind of load switch to take most of the house onto batteries during peak and only switch back during offpeak. Of course the wonderful issues of backfeeding and gracefully switching back over that need some investigating but on a commercial level its done frequently. I want to keep an eye open for that or for an additional secondary source too. Having a solar panel on the roof is camouflage here it changes me form the industrial neighbour to some crazy hippie. Which unfortunately is good camouflage for a frugal individual who used to live in a rural community until urban sprawl swallowed it up and its now becoming a bedroom community for the city of Ottawa proper.
there are a lot of numbers to crunch and a lot of inputs so thats where and why a PLC seems best to me, especially since i'm comfy programming one to do reasonably advanced functions
For that piddling 700' order service to a meter pedestal by the road, and then take it the rest of the way yourself. It ain't brain surgery after all, you just need to buy two transformers and 700' of MV cable along with the "elbow" connections. Of course you'll be paying for the couple percent transformer losses instead of the utility, but that's still preferable to the cost and maintenance of an off grid system for shop sized loads. Two pad mount transformers and one continuous segment of MV cable require almost no maintenance, and since you disconnect at your meter ped for any maintenance you don't need any special tools like hot sticks.
According to their people, they won't let me do that - they won't simply connect up near the road and leave me to it from there. Being a monopoly, if they are lying to me, it's a bit hard to do much about them. I can try b*tching to the PUC, but it's clear they have the PUC in their hip pocket. Certainly the most uncooperative power utility I've ever had dealings with...
Not sure where you are, but the utility doesn't have a choice generally. If you order service to a meter pedestal, that's what they have to provide. Their responsibility as well as their right to question anything ends at the meter mounted on that ped. The only authority with jurisdiction over what happens after that meter would be your local building inspector. You just need to put together your plan and go over it with the inspector, the utility has no say in it.
that sounds like a big negative on portability so i think i'm skipping for this shop. the HOUSE on the other hand if i splurge and go to Central heating thats tempting
If you've got cheap electricity it's a good way to go. Trenched vertical coil installation is the most economical way to go, the old drilled deep vertical loop method works, but is more expensive with no performance benefit.
As for portability, not particularly, though it would be possible to install loops at different locations with disconnects, since it's just an antifreeze solution that circulates in them. I suppose that could have some limited applications since the coil in the ground isn't expensive.
You can NOT use an unvented fuel burning heater in a machine shop setting, especially if the room is sealed up tight to keep the heat in
- when you burn gas or oil, you are dumping mass quantities of water vapor moisture from combustion into the air. And unless you have the combustion air vented to go outside, all that moisture goes into the shed air.
You'll be damned close to rainclouds forming inside the shed. Warm and humid is very bad for machined steel and iron products.
Oh, and unvented is also illegal in California AFAIK. Unless they've relented recently and allow them with oxygen depletion sensors
- that I would never trust my life on anyway.
There are 100 different ways to do it, depending on what you find at a good price.
An RV forced air furnace would work fine, but now you need to run a
120VAC to 12VDC converter to run the fan motor. And consider most RV equipment has sleeve bearing brush type fan motors that are meant for intermittent use, you are going to run it all winter and get maybe a year or two out of each fan motor.
If you want small and reasonably priced, residential direct vent (coaxial fitting through the wall) console heaters would work fine, propane or natural, and they come as small as 14K BTUH. Put it on the center of the end wall, or under that one double-glazed window you were going to put in the long wall facing South - someplace where you weren't going to stack things in front anyway.
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