Incorrectly installed Flat plate collectors

Water Water Heating
1

I need to report on the most interesting issue i have come across in a long long time.

The last week we were installing for a client that has to deal with an electrical bill of between 8k and 10k per month. Normal modern house and the consumption did not make sense. This was an remote quotation and we had no recordings to work from and the size of the system was based on the available budget. We did the best we could to install the most panels and batteries to try and offset his account.

While installing we did a five day recording to get the proper data to know what we are working with and were surprised to see an average of 100kwh per day with 60kwh being at night time. looked at what was on at night and the sum did not make sense. Stated investigating and ended up at the two geysers. Guess what we found?

1 x 150l with a flat plate collector and a circulation pump.
1 x 200l also with a flat plate and a collector.

And then all that were wrong, no insolation on the pipes, no anti syphon loop to prevent heat creep and the two pumps were plugged into a wall outlet without any control unit, directly connected to power running 24/7.

As an explanation, the controller will measure the temp at the Flatplate as well as the geyser and when the temp at the flatplate is 7deg higher than the temp in the geyser, the pump will start to circulate the warmer water to the geyser till there is a 3deg difference and stop to wait for more water to be heated again to 7deg above.

In this case the pump was running 24/7 circulating the water even on cold days and during the night, this will cool down the water over the area of the flat plate as well as this un-insulted pipes (At 137wh per meter of copper pipe) all the time while the element would try to heat the water again. this resuslted in night time loads of up to 10kwh during most of the night.

As a test we just unplugged the pumps and installed timers to prevent the elements from switching on during the night as we still have heat creep and losses through the pipes. Within the first day of testing, we reduced the daily consumption to 45kwh with a usage of less then 10kwh from the grid.

All of this because the flat plate collectors were installed incorrectly. We have ordered controllers and insulation from Gauteng and will install them next week.

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2

Wow, that is a lot of savings. Was this a self install, or did the poor client pay someone for this?

3

Sad part is he paid someone to install a system that was supposed to save him money only to get a system that increased his bill. Conservative calculation is showing that he has pumped a minimum af R60k into the atmosphere every year so far after the install.

2 Likes
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I hope he reported the contractor on Hello Peter forum.
These platforms do work!

5

On the upside, this customer has now probably gone from 10k a month in electricity… to practically zero.

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If I have a surge in night use, when people are sleeping, and no-one knows how or why, I start at the DB and switch breakers off, watching the Victron display on my phone.

Found some really interesting, not “viper loads”, but “devil loads” this way in the distant past.

Maybe an idea to pass on when people are looking for problem loads.

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Will only work after the install has been done and a GX is available. In this case it is a single mom. We realised the issue while doing an recording before the GX even had power and decided to help the lady find the problem.

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Stories like this make my blood boil.
You pay hard earned money to hire so called experts and you trust those experts to do a proper job, but then they #### it up and cost you money in the end.

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On top of that, what gets my blood boiling, is when it is a single female, older people or people who saved every cent to get it installed by these “expert” contractors … with no recourse.

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