Can I get a idea of what a normal electric bill from people who have a Geo unit?  I am new to Geothermal and we just built a new house, so I have nothing to compare the bill too.  We have a Waterfurnace Synergy3D unit and we are heating a total of 4700 sq ft.  Average temperature in February was 22 degrees.

Thanks,

Jon

Qualifiers include location and cost kwh. 200 might be too much while 400 could be cheap depending on those factors.

Michigan and the price is 0.13KWH.

My customers with similar sized homes in mid MI paid 250-650. The $650 was due to leaving the house open to a solarium causing a lot of auxiliary use.
This would not include regular household electric consumption.
You have Consumers Energy?

Yes we have Consumers Energy.  Our house is completely electric.  Below is our monthly bills so far.

December   $470
January      $430
February     $405

So this looks like our system is working on par with other houses in the same area?

Here in our freezer we call home, 4600 sq ft including the low attic, I just grabbed the first statement I could find from the Electric Company. Here then from the bill:

Average temp for the period (November 2012) = 23

Had a pump and lights running most of the time for an aquaponics system (1300watts+-)

Total KW used was 2002 divided by 33 days =

AVG KW/Day = 60

Total billing = $285

We are pump and dump, have a Palm inverter technology, approx 4kw unit, 40f entering water temps, some heat energy from nowhere:} Ran the woodstove a lot
I know the variables make it hard to compare one house to another, but it is interesting, nevertheless...

So you supplemented your heating with the woodstove also?  So if you did not run the wood stove, your bill usage would have been higher?

 

Definitely electric usage would have been higher w/o the stove.

So, there are lots of variables...

The stove, an Englander NC30, has a u-shaped coil inside it that heats our DHW. Otherwise, we currently have minimal DHW supplied by the GSHP. That will be true until I get a buffer tank installed.

Size of house and temps are somewhat close. We have no solar gain in the time frame I am reporting on. Our floor set temperature on one big hydronic zone for the house was set at 19c.

I am running 71 degrees on the main floor (forced Air portion) and 69 degree in the basement (in floor radiant heat).

Jon I tried to email but it failed, attached is a link to my spreadsheet which I use with my TED5000 to track my KWH use for my 3 Ton Climatemaster for my 3800 sqft house in Maryland. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4qBBFFjQo7KTWNqSWY5UWtLVzA/edit?usp=sharing

Hope it helps.

Consumers doeswn't differentiate between geo and regular household use. Do you know your base line electric bill? A Family of 4 can easily use $150. Do you have electric hot water.

If it gets too high you can always suplement with a nice propane furnace for only $800/mo

What's propane cost per gallon up your way?

Did the OP mention tonnage on system in question?

Posted By joe.ami on 15 Mar 2013 07:52 AM
Consumers doeswn't differentiate between geo and regular household use. Do you know your base line electric bill? A Family of 4 can easily use $150. Do you have electric hot water.

If it gets too high you can always suplement with a nice propane furnace for only $800/mo

Unfortunately I do not have the baseline.  Our house is completely electric.

Posted By engineer on 15 Mar 2013 12:42 PM What's propane cost per gallon up your way? Did the OP mention tonnage on system in question?

Propane is $1.89 here.  Sorry what does OP stand for?

Jon

OP= Original Poster, OP- TheOpticZone.

I was also wondering what size Synergy 3d unit.

ChrisJ

Over here, the price of propane is:

$3.12/gallon first year and tank fee is waived. ( To get you in, I guess)

Minimum 75 gallons for delivery. price per gallon per year based on usage, over 1 year:

<100 gallons, 6.15
>300 gallons = 5.94

OP is original poster:}


Also, regarding terms, on a new project I just started work on, the well terms used are production well and injection well. These may be better terms than 'Pump and Dump' if using two wells.

Yikes that's pricey!

I am pretty sure we are paying too much, and continue to try to work with our contractor during this third year of Geo use. So, I'm watching this thread with interest. We live in the Twin Cities. We have a 3100 sq ft house, + an "unheated" basement that has 3 ducts (this was a retrofit in an 1898 house with hot water heat). We have a separate meter for the geo. I have attached the goe-only usage so far this winter. Xcel Energy charges $00.067 per kwh on the "energy controlled" plan. Our overall gas/electric bill has not decreased since we installed geo; previously were were heating the house with a 50 year old gas boiler that we figure was about 60% efficiency. We have a 5 ton Carrier GTPX Split (50YDS) with back up GT-PW 50YEW, and a a second back up water heater/boiler.

I don't see the attachment,so will try again.

Posting gas cost/use too for total figure. You'll see we've been experimenting with calling for the emergency (gas) heat more frequently in the past month to try to get the bill down (I never expected to say that when we installed geo!)

You should be able to compare your geo electrical use (especially since it's on a separate meter) with the amount of gas you used in the years you previously heated with gas.  Correct the gas usage with your estimate of efficiency (since you're comparing to electricity which is close to 100%).  Covert both the gas # and the electricity # to btu, and you should get a rough idea of how your geo compares (you might hope for a 3:1 factor, at least, but you may be guessing incorrectly on the efficiency of the old gas unit)  .  You could get fancy and correct for HDD and make some guestimates on duct losses, etc between the 2 systems, but I would think that just a simple ball park would make things pretty clear one way or the other. If you're using the geo for water heating, you might want to add in water heating costs as well.

I'm also wondering why your Dec. #s are much higher than your Jan #s when Jan is usually the coldest month.  Maybe the answer was in your second chart which was tooo smaaaal for these old eyes to read.