Energy Efficiency

Air-Conditioner Energy Optimisation

On the Sunshine Coast, Air-Conditioners are the most popular solution to keep living and working conditions bearable, especially during the summer heat. In this exciting article, we take a look at how to optimise AC usage to make sure we’re getting the most chill for the lowest cost and energy usage. If you’re interested in an air-conditioner solution for your home or business, don’t hesitate to contact our team – we’re experienced with all aspects of air-conditioning and service Noosa and surrounding suburbs on the Sunshine Coast.

Reducing Air-Conditioning Running Costs with Solar

Using solar power to run your air-conditioner is a long-term solution that can help to reduce costs in the long-term. Over time, a key benefits is being able to run your appliances during the day without paying for power from the grid. Meanwhile, if you already have solar, it’s important to maximise solar power usage for your AC (as opposed to power from the grid). An example might be cooling down your rooms before the evening comes – instead of waiting until it’s dark, when you will need to use power from the grid.

Using Optimal AC Modes

AC units have a wide variety of modes and on a hot day it can be tempting to hit ‘Siberia’. However, launching into the coldest and most powerful mode is not the most efficient way to use your air-conditioner. Economy modes optimise the way the air-conditioner works to get a great result without redlining power usage. For example, Daikin’s Econo Mode [SRC: Daikin ] prevents excessive cooling and only uses 70% of the appliance’s capacity. This achieves cooling without wasting electricity.

Air-Conditioning Solutions – Noosa & Surrounding Suburbs

Awareness of Modern Features

If you’re looking to purchase an air-conditioner, it’s important to come at it from an energy-efficiency point of view. Pay attention to your prospective machine’s features. For example, some Daikin split systems come with ‘Intelligent Eye’, which monitors whether a room is being used, and adjusts the AC delivery to suit usage.

Awareness of Ratings

For new air-conditioners, pay attention to energy rating labels. These give an indication of both energy efficiency and energy consumption, helping you to appreciate how a specific appliance compares to its peers.

Use the Right Air-Conditioner

While there are many different types of air-conditioners, some are more energy-efficient than others, depending on the type of premises you are cooling. For cooling bedrooms and larger rooms, small, portable air-conditioning solutions are generally the least energy efficient appliances. Split systems are the recommended solution in most cases, since they are more energy efficient, and can achieve and sustain comparable cooling without requiring as much power. However, they do cost more upfront and they’re not portable.

Optimising Usage

An important step towards optimising your air-conditioning is to only cool the required rooms, and for these rooms to be sealed from the outside. If you’re cooling the entire house, and all of the doors and windows are open, you might as well just throw your wallet out the window – which won’t be a problem, since the window is already open. Using air-conditioners minimally and within sealed rooms is effective an effective way to cool the home that won’t require the AC to use its full power.

In Conclusion

Like any appliance, air-conditioners can and should be optimised. With AC, this process starts right at the beginning – selecting an appropriate system for your home – and then operating the system in an efficient manner. If you’d like to know more about AC on the Sunshine Coast, contact our team – we are here to assist.

Avoid this Obvious Solar Mistake

Solar power provides homeowners with a fabulous source of electrical energy. Nowhere is this truer than on the Sunshine Coast, where we enjoy beautiful sunny conditions for most of the year along with a fantastic natural environment.

This article discusses optimising your solar solution – in particular, ensuring your high-use appliances are using solar energy and not power from the grid. If you’re making this mistake, don’t worry – you’re not alone. Let’s check it out.

Not Maximising Your Usage of Solar Production

One of the primary goals of solar installations is to ensure that you are making the most of your solar power. For solar systems (with no battery), that means using power as much as possible during the day – when the sun is shining.

We install a range of solar battery solutions, including Enphase

To maximise the benefit of your solar system, it is important to adjust your energy consumption where possible to ensure that you are using the energy you produce, rather than purchasing from your energy retailer.

Examples:

Run swimming pools between the house of 10am-3pm
Use household appliances (dishwashers, washing machines, clothes dryers if you must) during the day where possible

One of the largest users of power in the home is the hot water system – electric hot water systems account for approximately a quarter of your electricity bill. [SRC: energyrating.gov.au ]

To make the most of your solar, it’s essential to make sure your hot water system is heating during the day, and using solar power. If it’s heating at night, it will not be using your solar energy (unless you have a battery) and will be drawing power from the grid, causing unnecessary costs.

Part of our service is to optimise electrical configurations.. while this might sound obvious to you, but we have seen quite a few homes where this problem is happening. If you’re going to the effort of collecting solar energy, it only makes sense to maximise it!

The Solution – Install a Timer

The solution is to install a timer on your hot water system that will ensure it only operates during peak solar collection times (during the middle of the day). Having a solar system in place is a significant step, but it’s only one part of the solution. The other part is optimising your home to make the most of solar power.

Get Assistance

If you don’t know when your hot water system is heating or need help organising a timer for your hot water system, or would like further information about optimising your home or business, please contact our team.

The Efficiencies of Electrification

Electrification is an important concept which describes a possible consumer-based solution to reduce global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We are interested in exploring these kind of ideas because we want to find ways to make our business and community more sustainable. In this article we examine electrification – what it is, how it works, and the changes it could make. If you’re on the Sunshine Coast and interested in making your home or business more sustainable, please don’t hesitate to contact our team for some great ideas.

What is Electrification?

When electricity first became available as a means to power households and machines on a large scale, electrification simply meant using electricity to power things.

The concept has evolved from its original meaning to become a word to encapsulate the solution of moving towards clean electrical energy to reduce emissions and reduce global warming.

Electrification is the process of powering things by electricity; it also often means introducing electrical power to replace other power sources.

Global Warming and Greenhouse Gases

A major challenge facing humanity is the increase of the surface temperature of the earth due to greenhouse gas emissions. As gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide increase in the atmosphere, they create ‘the greenhouse effect’, trapping sunlight and increasing the temperature of the earth. [SRC: BOM]

With Carbon Dioxide levels in 2021 being more than 50% greater than the levels measured in 1750 (414 ppm vs 277ppm) and rising, [SRC: BOM] a concerted international approach is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Otherwise, global warming will persist and climate change will not abate. [SRC: BOM] Towards this objective, the Australian government has set the goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Electrification Solutions: Local, National, Global

The Electrification Solution

The electrification solution involves a 2-step shift in the way we use energy:

Switch from fossil fuel sources and machines to electrical ones
Power these machines by renewable energy sources such as solar power.

Why it Matters What We Do at Home

In our day-to-day lives, the non-renewable energy sources we use produce a large amount (42%) of Australian greenhouse gases. [SRC: Rewiring Australia ] These types of machines include: petrol cars, gas heaters, gas hot water and gas stoves, and fossil-fuel power plants supplying network electricity. The type of energy we use, and the machines we use, affect our national carbon footprint. Converting these fossil-fuelled machines to electrical versions, and powering them from renewable energy sources would enable us to reduce our carbon footprint.

Electrification and Energy Independence at Home

To achieve electrification at home, it’s essentially about:

1. Supply: Powering your home with renewable solar energy which may include a battery depending on the use case and budget

2. Demand: Phasing out machines within your home that use petrol or gas, and replacing them with efficient electrical versions. Examples include:

Home energy > Installing a (smart) solar solution
Petrol Car > Electric Car (ideally with smart charging)
Gas / Electric Heater > Reverse Cycle Air Conditioning
Gas Hot Water > Electric Hot Water / Heat Pump
Gas Stove > Electric Stove / Induction Cooktop
Fossil-Fuelled Power > Solar Power
Lighting – Replacing incandescent lighting with energy efficient LED

More Information

Moving into the Future

The shift to a net-zero emissions future will require a large technological shift in Australia. We are here to support this shift with energy solutions for homes and businesses in and around Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. Contact our team to discuss a solution for your home or business today.

Monitoring Energy Usage at Home

To make sure your home or business is energy efficient, it’s essential to have the capability of monitoring energy usage in real time. Whereas in the not-too-distant past we needed to rely on quarterly reports from energy providers, there is now a wide range of technology available to help consumers understand how they are using energy and how that usage can be optimised.

How to Monitor Energy at Home

Energy usage can be monitored by the installation of monitoring technology between your incoming power source and your appliances. This is especially important for solar installations, since generating your own energy only makes sense if you are optimising the usage of the energy you are collecting.

*Note – all of our solar solutions come with an energy monitoring app so you can track and manage your energy. Learn more about our solar solutions here.

To give you an idea, here are some screenshots that come from our Enphase solar installation at Noosa Electric Co HQ at Noosaville:

Diagram #1

Diagram #1 Notes: This was an overcast day. This day began with the necessity to draw power from the grid [a] before the solar collection picked up [b]. Working with solar power means an increased awareness of weather and solar collection to optimise your power configuration in real-time. Towards the end of the day, solar collection reduced again and a combination of grid and solar power was utilised.

Diagram #2

Diagram #2 Notes: This day also began with overcast weather. However, grid power was rapidly overtaken by solar power. The uneven shape of this graph indicates solar power was coming and going through the day, due to overcast conditions. However, sufficient solar power was collected through most of the day to power our office and export some back to the grid as well.

Diagram #3

Diagram #3 Notes: This day began with rain. After the weather cleared, the rest of the day is in a perfect “football” shape, indicating great solar collection and export to the grid. You can see where our EV was charged later in the day, an event totally covered by solar power. It’s important to ensure this type of major event is covered by solar power.

Diagram #4

Diagram #4 Notes: This is a perfect day of solar energy collection. We did need to use grid energy at the beginning of the day, but that’s because we started work before the sun came up. After this period we enjoyed great solar collection with EV charging being undertaken through most of the day.

Diagram #5

Diagram #4 Notes: This is a perfect day of solar collection. This was a Sunday, so we weren’t using any energy today (apart from the bare minimum to keep things ticking along). Most of this energy was exported back to the grid.

In Conclusion

Solar energy is a fabulous way to collect energy independently, especially on the Sunshine Coast where we have an abundance of sunlight all year round. Making the most of solar energy requires a solar solution and energy management and optimisation. For assistance with your solar solution, please contact our team – we are here to assist.