A Light Bulb Moment for Power Diverters

The best way to understand how the power diverter concept of managing your solar power generation and electricity usage can lower your power bill without having to compromise on comfort, convenience or invest a lot of money is to present an actual use case.

We started with a typical size solar system without any batteries thinking that our backyard had a decent amount of sun and that we can harvest some of that wasted sun to reduce our electricity bill.   Months went by and it was difficult to notice any significant reduction.  Maybe we needed to wait a whole season.  So, we did and still not much.  Years went by and we started wondering if all this investment in solar was worth it.

So we set up a way to monitor our usage and solar generation. Big mistake. It drove us crazy because now we saw exactly when we were not using our solar generation.  We got very anxious whenever the sun was out and our usage was low, or when our usage was high, and the sun was behind clouds. We were worn out trying to conserve our usage one minute, and then the very next minute, we had to frantically use up all the excess power.  We even timed our cooking scheduled based on when the sun was out.  This showed us clearly why we didn’t see the expected return on our investment.

That’s when we learned about power diverters.  Initially, they were used for heating water, but what about other devices that can consume significant amount of power or even better yet any device that consumes power. We have two electric vehicles and use mini splits because they were more efficient.  We thought those items would be perfect for accepting extra power diverted to them.  The more we thought about, the more we realized we had other devices that could be used as power diverters.  They had to be devices that didn’t really have set schedule of when they needed to be turned on or for how long such as our outdoor fountain and cistern that need to be aerated by a pump consuming over 1300 W and our basement dehumidifier consuming over 500 W.

So, we made all those devices into power diverters.  They basically turn on when there is excess power and turn off when there is not.  Some of these devices can be adjusted to use different levels of power.  For example, both the EV charger and mini split can adjust its charging current and temperature, respectively.  We discovered that using the power diverter to control the A/C is another good way to keep the house comfortable.  Since “the AC only works when the sun is out”, the house stays cool by cooling the house before the temperature rises.   When the sun is behind a cloud, there is no need to cool down the house.  With this diverter method our house temperature doesn’t seem to fluctuate as much.  Think of it as more of a proactive approach rather than the traditional passive way of waiting until the room temperature to rise before cooling starts.

After doing all that, we liked our solar system much better and felt less stressed out about wasting money. And not to mention that we finally noticed a decrease in our power bill.

To see a live demo of a simliar system with batteries that can offer even more savings, go here.