American Solartechnics Pellet Boiler

[mchasal]

That's something else I'm waiting for here. It's sort of here, but to get it you need to buy & install (have installed) a real, 'approved', ETS heating unit. As far as I know. Which are kind of spendy I think. I have everything here already to do that with (electric boiler & water tanks), would just need to add a couple of controls & change a bit of piping - but that doesn't qualify. Unless they've changed things - been a little while since I asked. I will be asking again at some point.

I suppose that's going to vary by utility. As far as I know, our utility doesn't care. You just tell them you want to switch to time-of-use billing and that's that. It's up to you to make sure your usage and equipment takes advantage of it, but it's not something I've put a lot of research into. (broken link removed to http://www.centralhudson.com/timeofusebilling/index.aspx) Looks like you can really get bitten by it though. You save 11% off normal rates for off peak, but pay +18% of normal for on-peak, so you've got to have your electrical ducks in a row to not blow it.

With all the hype about the Tesla home battery thing recently, I've wondered if that's going to get marketed toward this. Just charge your batteries off the grid at night, and deplete them during the peak hours. Not sure if there's a real payoff for that given how expensive the battery setup is likely to be.

 

[peakbagger]

I heard of one long term Madawaska boiler owner in the area that had a backup electric coil in his 2500 gallon storage tank. His wife didn't want to feed the boiler so he switched over to the off peak power heating rate to heat his very well insulated double wall house. I don't think he burned any wood after that. A few years later I heard he installed geothermal not sure if he ran that off peak.

 

[mchasal]

I heard of one long term Madawaska boiler owner in the area that had a backup electric coil in his 2500 gallon storage tank. His wife didn't want to feed the boiler so he switched over to the off peak power heating rate to heat his very well insulated double wall house. I don't think he burned any wood after that. A few years later I heard he installed geothermal not sure if he ran that off peak.

Garn also promotes that for their boilers. http://www.garn.com/products/ (at the bottom).
I recall reading somewhere that they had sold some Garn Jr's to people who had no intention of ever putting wood in them.

 

[tom in maine]

The ETS brick heaters are a really bad deal. They are quite expensive and just did not seem to make sense to me, ever. They keep showing up every few years as a great energy saving scheme. If we had really decent time of use rates, they might be a consideration, but still the initial cost is high and you are completely tied to a single fuel.
We invested a ton of money, years ago, getting a tank UL listed with a simple electric heater. The rates never came into play. They did work well, but I would much rather consider using a heat pump on a TOU rate
even though it would not heat the tank to 180F the way a resistance heater would. Integrated with other options or alone with a large enough tank or a small enough heat load, makes a lot more sense to me.
Then again, I am somewhat biased by the concept of storing heat in water.

 

[peakbagger]

Angus King (the former governor) was the most recent promoter for ETS, he was pushing for a special rate to couple ETS with wind generated power. Luckily he got distracted with running for senate and the concept went away.

 

[maple1]

I would much rather consider using a heat pump on a TOU rate even though it would not heat the tank to 180F the way a resistance heater would. Integrated with other options or alone with a large enough tank or a small enough heat load, makes a lot more sense to me. Then again, I am somewhat biased by the concept of storing heat in water.

Absolutely agree 100%. The girl from the power company I was talking to about this at a home show a couple years ago went totally off her game and had no idea what to say when I asked her about TOU with my water based storage system I already had in place. Had never heard of that concept. An ETS was the ONLY thing at that time that they would put in a TOU meter for. I was only in the curious stage at that point, since it would still be rather pricey to heat our house with electric even if using TOU & storage. But with advancing heat pump tech I am really looking forward to what the future holds. I won't be doing wood forever - and my wife isn't excited about the prospects of doing it if I can't - so I'm still scoping out future diversification possibilities to heat my water with. I also don't need 180, been doing fine this winter with a bit less even with my standard Slant Fin. Might try a mini-split too.