"Average wattage: higher than 99% of other Sense users" slackers ;)

Seems like you all aren’t trying very hard :wink:

Where are my other 1%-ers at?

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It’s like the bizarro world King of Always On! :grinning:

I’ve gotta ask…have you used Sense it all to help get those numbers down? If so, I’m scared to ask what they were before…

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Watch your back…I’m not far behind:

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Did some big improvements prior to getting Sense, and then starting to watch for areas I can improve from the new baseline.

I run a non-profit reptile facility so it’s a ton of Heat lamps, heat tape, etc…
Can’t jump on the LED bandwagon because we need the heat source and UV LEDs aren’t where they need to be for reptiles either.

seems like these reports are of questionable value for some of us, until other sense users actually reflects similar houses…I am in the class as you two…

but we have 2 electric cars that alone use 600+ KW’s per month

also have a lot of home automation which up’s the always on amount

maybe similar houses can be broken out when discover e.g. discovers more

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Sorry for the stupid question, but where does one find that report?

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should be in your email. The sender is hello@sense.com

Thank you… I found it. I’m on the high side as well.

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Am I the only one thinking we’ve got to be able to come up with a lower consumption cost to the reptile habitats? Average of 5 KW is a lot to play with for improvement. What about some sort of radiant heating system? Purpose a bathroom floor system.

I’m very open to ideas/experimenting :slight_smile: Solar on the facility helps offset costs, but a full roof of solar doesn’t cover the usage.

By increasing the ambient temperature of the facility and with significant insulation at least the heat tape (similar to radiant floor but per cage/rack for animals that can be maintained with Belly heat only) side of the electrical usage went down. Though it’s a balancing act because some species don’t thrive well if the ambient is to high, as well as making it less comfortable for people during tours, etc…

Once there are good LED UVB bulbs that would go a long way for reducing power consumption for the tropical species, but wouldn’t solve the Basking + UV for Desert species. There are Ceramic heat emitters that plugin to light sockets, but from what i’ve seen they are typically much higher wattage than the low watt Halogens i primarily use (38w)

I was thinking about the heat tape. What about per cage insulation to reduce the local draw? I assume there’s a lot of glass so reasonable percentage of the ambient temp may be coming from the tape/heat lamps.

Great discussion thanks for commenting/providing ideas. Keep them coming.

Our enclosures that use heat tape are built out of a hollow core plastic material that the heat tape is inserted into.
The fronts are the only part of the enclosures that are made of glass. The trick with local insulation is that you need appropriate amount of ventilation and air exchange for healthy animals, and you also need to make sure that the in cage ambient is not to high due to requiring the heat tape/basking temp to be reasonably higher than the ambient.

Essentially if it was a closed/insulated box the ambient temp would become very close to the basking temp which would not allow the ability for the animals to thermoregulate since they only need the higher temp to digest for the most part. An Idea I plan on experimenting on with less delicate species is to do more of a day/night temp drop so they aren’t being heated as much during the evening, as well a smaller test group to see if the basking temp was only on during a reasonable period after eating and short spurts on other days how that would impact digestion/health as well as electrical usage. Fun stuff :slight_smile: