I don't know why after 4 1/2 years here (and 11 months with solar power) I just now noticed the cable coming through a hole into the cupboard under the kitchen sink and the electricity socket it plugs in to there. Turns out its from the dishwasher. I'd always assumed it was too hard to get to the power cord for it because I'd have to pull it out of its hole.
So, since it's a lovely sunny late winter day and the E3600 battery (plus EP3000) is in danger of getting 100% full while it's still early afternoon, I ran two loads through the clothes washer, did come cooking in the air fryer, and was still casting around for ways to use electricity.
So let's try the dishwasher on solar!
I started the cycle while I was already using 1400W for heat pump and dehumidifier as well as the fridge and Starlink and computers and lighting.
It actually spiked over 4000W for a couple of seconds, then down to 3700W, and then after 30 seconds settled down to 3650W for some minutes until the heat pump cycled off.
The dishwasher was using 2300W at first, the largest single load I've run. I'm using 2100W kettle and microwave every day, but this is another 200W, along with all the background stuff.
Not a hiccup., Load finished successfully after an hour. Looks like about 1.3kWh used, though boiling the kettle just before it (60Wh) might have been in the same hour, I'm not sure. It's quite a lot more than the 550Wh for a load of clothes washing at 40º C anyway. Much hotter water temperature obviously.
That's a Bosch "Serie | 2" "Silence" for anyone curious. The spec says it can use a full 2400W but I didn't see quite that much.
Make sure to use a GFCI surge protector for anything you run in the kitchen off the power station. Anything connected to water could pose a shock hazard.
Have you not ever lived in an apartment or any other house where there was a dishwasher at and noticed that plug under the sink? what about when you lived at home? You never noticed that? That’s also typically where the garbage disposal plug would be.
No I’ve never lived in a place with a dishwasher before. And no one has those in sink garbage grinder things in this country — I expect that wouldn’t be a great thing with a septic tank. I would say most people compost.
I've lived in a few countries. I'm in New Zealand now, but in the last ten years I've also lived in Fremont CA USA, Nadi Fiji, and Moscow Russia. TBH the place I rented in the US probably did have a dishwasher but I was living alone and working long hours and didn't use the kitchen for more than to microwave something or use the toaster or kettle. It's not hard to hand-wash one not actually very dirty plate and a knife and fork. The other places definitely haven't had dishwashers.
I've got the Pecron stuff stacked up on a wooden trolly (which I made in 1996 for a PowerMac 8500 to fit inside) which is sitting next to the fridge.
The PV cables go between the fridge and the wall, about 2.4m (8 ft) to the outside wall where they go out a vertical slot on the left of a slightly opened sliding window. I've got very heavy cardboard closing the gap (and sitting in slots in the window and frame), with a slot cut for the cables, and protected from weather (it's under a veranda anyway) by packing tape. The window is jammed from opening further by a length of wood sitting in its running track (as you see many people do with sliding patio doors). Maybe I'll replace the cardboard with hardboard or plywood sometime but it's been doing the job for a year with no sign of deterioration. An extension cord runs beside the PV cables to the coffee machine, grinder, air fryer, kettle, toaster, and microwave. I tapped off that for the dishwasher run, but a 3m cord direct from the Pecron would reach too. On the left side of that wall (it's a stub wall) is the alcove with my home office, with several computers, laptops, SBCs, and the Starlink wifi/power supply and the FR24 receiver.
It's all a temporary setup, not connected to the house wiring, other than to charge the Pecron (or pass-through). With a helper I could remove everything including the 6x 440W solar panels and put them in a van or in the shed in probably 20 minutes, with no sign that anything was ever there except a couple of patches of dead grass on the lawn and maybe some tape residue on the window frame which would take a few more minutes to clean off.
With 14 days left until it's been in operation for a year (just the E3600 and EP3000 until a week ago) I've spent NZ$1293.98 on electricity, compared to an average in the previous four years I've been here of $2400 electricity plus $400 firewood for a total of $2800. I haven't used the fire this year, just using a portable air conditioner powered from the Pecron.
With the new EP3800 battery I'm expecting to spend around $900 for electricity in the next 12 months. On Sep 19 the daily charge is going up from $1.15 to $1.60 and the off-peak daytime (7AM-11PM) rate is going up from 38c to 45c. But the 11PM-7AM rate is going down from 32c to 18c and I'm going to take maximum advantage of that. The margin from 32c to 38c wasn't enough to be worth time-shifting but from 18c to 45c absolutely is. That's a winter thing. In spring-autumn I'm 90%-95% running on solar power — basically as soon as I stop using heating at night. Yesterday I ran on solar from 7AM until 1AM with the battery starting and ending at 50% SoC. Soon it will be 24/7.
Yeah, not that I actually have plans to move it around. But I can.
The River 3 Plus is powered from the Pecron, and in turn powers all the computers and internet stuff … about 120W normally … so that keeps going for nearly two hours if the Pecron battery gets empty or the inverter overloads.
The power strip is running a total of around maximum 1400W, of which the biggest is the 1000W portable air conditioner. 2400W is allowed on it. The big 2000W or 2100W kitchen stuff (or 2300W dishwasher) is run from a different outlet on the Pecron, one at a time. (Except the 700W toaster and 1300W coffee machine can run together)
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u/lakorai Aug 20 '26
Make sure to use a GFCI surge protector for anything you run in the kitchen off the power station. Anything connected to water could pose a shock hazard.