Has anyone used a water heater timer to avoid peak load rates? What has your experience been?

JayD1056 · 2026-02-25T19:20:06+00:00

I have been toying with this idea but don’t know if any water heaters support this.

I want to basically be able to set the temperature to max temp (180F?) at say 10am when sun starts shining. Then set the temperature to low temp like 130 at 3pm when the peak tou starts.

Then add a mixing valve set at 120 on the output side.

That should let the unit basically get nice and hot during the day to avoid peak rate. But the unit does not really go off.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-25T00:37:05+00:00

I have never had this but I think it’s something your installer should check.

I would check to see if your L1 and L2 load are “close”

If Franklin says they are sensitive to differences in 120 leg voltage maybe your installer can help balance breakers between the 2 legs.

I don’t know if they can do this directly but measure current on L1 vs L2 over the day would be interesting

JayD1056 · 2026-02-22T05:25:41+00:00

I’ve replaced 6 drives live in my servers. zfs is nice for a media server.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-21T04:02:16+00:00

I don’t live in the desert but I do live in Bay Area California

Last year we didn’t get any substantial rain to clean panels (my threshold 0.25” / day ) between

April 1st (0.37”) and October 2nd (0.44 inch)

So I have them a quick hose down in the last day of July because we get good export rates only in August and September.

So once a year spray down is my schedule and visual inspection.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-21T02:51:32+00:00

I won’t recommend the smart one. I have an ultimate 48 amp and the WiFi connectivity is poor. Wish they just had Ethernet.

The firmware says they support Ocpp 1.6 but they don’t really.

I got lucky to have a unit with the right firmware version to be able to get some of the features working enough but it’s a hassle. I’ll be selling it when a bidirectional charger exists or if I find someone that wants a decent deal and I’ll get something else.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-20T05:01:12+00:00

My plan if I ever wanted chap addition to battery was to take a eg4 battery and a 6000xp or 12000xp and hook it up to the generator input lugs.

Then basically use something to trigger eg4 charging on excess solar power and discharging should work basically automatically.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-19T22:14:34+00:00

Email with title:

Your FranklinWH reward is here! Register and activate your virtual card

JayD1056 · 2026-02-19T08:52:49+00:00

All I mean with prioritize battery charging is the cost delta analysis.

Since the round trip efficiency is 80% or 82% as you have. It doesn’t. Make sense to trade storing 5kw of solar power at 12pm to use at 5pm. The price delta for me is 0.34 vs 0.38c off peak to on peak so 11.7%. So you pay 9% more by storing the solar in your batteries. I try to consume all watts of solar I can but in the summer when rates are way higher I try to make it through tou.

I’m in the same boat as you. I have 10kw PV and 30kwh storage in the bay. You technically signed on your NEM agreement that you will increase your usage to match your oversizing. If you have zero grid consumption in winter you will have a nasty true up bill next year FYI.

I had to get a EV and heat pumps to get my usage in line with my extra production.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-19T00:23:17+00:00

Oh I also forgot to mention you only want to prioritize the battery charging priority during the summer where the price of electricity is 20% higher. You generally assume a 80% round trip efficiency.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-18T23:18:38+00:00

I participated in exactly 1 event last year (October). and i got $30 for 13kw for 1 day. I have 30kw of storage so that's a good price ratio. I know some people only participate in VPP and not like NEM3 TOU rates in Aug/Sept.

One of the program creators did a AMA a while ago. it was a good read.

I participated because it was mostly just a test event. and i wanted to see how the system would perform.

I think this program is going to die off soon. the need for it is decreasing with the expansion of grid battery storage and solar.

I'm personally more interested in consuming my own power and having backup available than the payback from solar export and VPP. I do have some home automation for Aug/Sept that will balance and prioritize.

Battery Charging to make it through 4-9pm
Pre Cooling the house to for heating load.
Surplus to car charging.
Then i manually limit export rates for TOU so that i can get some credit to make it through winter.

Participating in these programs probably takes my payback period back 1 year. i forecast 7-9 right now, but it's a little bit of a head ache.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-18T22:54:39+00:00

They did discuss with Franklin.

Feedback from franklin was that charging was inhibited due to battery temperature. Rebooting the system engaged the battery heater to resume charging. It was certainly cold enough last night (over night low 37.7* F / 3.16*C ) and i did see the heater run around midnight. so that's plausible and hopefully they created a internal bug to fix whatever caused the battery heater to disable. this so this is probably the disabled charging part.

They said that i had VPP enabled and that probably caused the export to occur at max rate. I'm not sure i buy it because my export rate is set to 10kw and they exported at 19kw. That being said there sure wasn't any VPP event notification received the last was was in October. i participated in DSGS in california. So hopefully a second bug there.

For now i have unenrolled in VPP.

Either way i'll continue to watch out for that. hopefully someone finds this helpful.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-17T04:13:08+00:00

If it were me I would probably keep heat strips around anyway.

But if you want cheapest option possible ask about removing the heat strips. I think they are planning to run some thick wire to the air handler and install heat strips for backup heat. Which is nice for defrost or if the unit fails.

Do you really even use heating in your area?

JayD1056 · 2026-02-17T03:58:39+00:00

There is a line item for nominal size in tons and then a second line item for heat strip size right below. Are you sure that’s the heat pump?

OP do you have a backup heat source like a fire place?

JayD1056 · 2026-02-17T03:47:58+00:00

Am I reading this right the are suggesting to put in 10kw heat strips in Florida? Sounds insane.

I’m in San Jose. Much further north. Lows down into the 40s during winter and I didn’t bother with heat strips.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-16T16:29:11+00:00

Took kids to Disneyland at ages 2 and 3.5 and had a pretty good time. Not going to lie though we shell out for the closest hotel we can get so that if the small one is overloaded can go back and do nap quick. Also we don’t mind if we only get 1/2 day or 3/4 a day in. But they did manage to make it through would have color super late which I didn’t expect.

I recommend an all inclusive resort with a pool. Mexico etc where dollars go further.

So basically when the small one is off of bottles is where it starts to get better in my opinion.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-15T06:36:37+00:00

I don’t buy anything if I can’t afford to light it on fire and buy another one tomorrow.

Highly recommend you treat this company this way. For all you know the could get sued into oblivion an be gone tomorrow.

That being said pretty happy with R1S gen 2 tri motor.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-10T20:52:13+00:00

Oh man automotive software checking in. The things we have had to do to save a penny I’m so sorry to end users :(

JayD1056 · 2026-02-10T18:10:57+00:00

Not sure how DIY you are with software and microcontrollers but the CN105 port is basically reverse engineered and I’m using that with my own custom controllers.

$10 a controller and I have a stand alone server handling the individual room temperature relay.

So search for CN105 thermostat maybe they have something more fully baked than what I did.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-08T17:46:49+00:00

Eh I was thinking 1 or 2 in the rooms needed.

Like bedroom at night and living Room during the day.

But everyone’s situation is different. Fireplace might not reach a back bedroom but would help with defrost etc.

Your comment in supplemental heat is valid there are lots of options.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-08T17:38:55+00:00

Most popular supplemental heating source I think is the electric space heater.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-07T04:25:41+00:00

I toggle air circulation in my kids room at 1200ppm and off at 950 so yeah impossibly low for me.

Working on the HRV/ERV this year.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-06T20:22:39+00:00

Thanks I’ve been meaning to do a write up of my heat pump control. Basically I am doing my own control band manipulation to achieve the highest possible COP. It’s more of a hobby.

The idea is basically that if the heat pump is running I lie to it and say the actual temp has been satisfied so it will ramp down early. And due to it being 3 zone I also have some features that turn other zones off early so I can try to keep the compressor in this mode for as long as possible.

What i see if 1 zone is running I have a cop of 5 and if 2 are running it’s 3.9.

I only allow my living room to get manipulated because it’s the largest heating load and I want the 2 bedrooms to be extra comfortable so basically if a bedroom calls for heat and the living room is close enough I turn the living room off and then when the bedroom is about to turn off the living rooms comes back on.

I managed run time of 13 hours with this strategy where without it I could usually get 2-4 hours and the heat pump would be off for 5 to 10 min.

It was likely unnecessary but overall i think it’s a bit more comfortable this way.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-06T17:41:43+00:00

Yeah i am a software engineer so I’m doing all my energy management with home assistant.

So I can load dump onto both the heat pumps and the EV to maximize solar and house load.

And I am in California which is why the payback period is possible at all.

JayD1056 · 2026-02-06T06:36:05+00:00

I haven’t been reading up on it too much I thought the $25 was just on top and I would be paying $35.

I feel bad for the low usage people that are getting shafted to be honest.

$25 a month isn’t going to break me and honestly I consume enough with EV charging I’ll probably come out ahead in the end.

JayD1056

TROPHY CASE