What’s your highest-power device?

What’s everyone’s single highest-power-consumption device? Here’s mine:

Conveniently Sense is detecting my Chevy Volt charge cycle today for the first time in weeks.

I’ve seen my stove climb up north of 7KW with both ovens and a few elements on. Otherwise, it’s our Volts - when both are charging together it’s ~7kw.

What exactly is the steam being generated for? I see HVAC listed as a separate (and based on the Volt, not insignificant) draw, so presumably it’s not a HVAC boiler or anything?

This is steam for a steam room. The HVAC is a regular air to air heat pump, drawing about 3kW in its first stage.

Aha. I should have assumed it was something simple. :wink:

@pswired

Pretty impressive bubbles for 18kW!

Mine’s a geothermal heat pump at about 6-6.5kW

I haven’t seen my A/C yet as I’ve only had Sense for a couple of months (middle of winter right now)… but as of now, my highest is a toss up between electric dryer and electric stove… my A/C shouldn’t be that much considering my stove is on a 40amp breaker, dryer is 30amp breaker, and my A/C is only on a 25amp breaker… my A/C is <3yrs old, 14SEER / 11EER… anyway, I’ve seen 7kW on dryer and as high as 5~6kW on stove…

you have me way beat… I can run my entire house on what you are using there…

My highest, before I added extension cables to my CTs, was the charging of our Tesla Model S - I had bubbles of around 19-20KW (240V x 80A). But Sense stopped detecting a few months ago when I added extension cables to fix an issue.

Here’s what it looks like in the Power Meter:

Model X comes in at 17kW
Model 3 at only around 10kW

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Very interesting that the added inductance from some CT cables is enough to break the device model. Fine margins.

Tesla M3 here at 7,202kw.

Whew, is that the 13.8 kV charger or the 33kV version? :grimacing:

Guessing some of you guys must have 200A service at your home.

It’s fairly standard here in Canada, but our builder cheaped out when the house was built in the 1980’s and only installed 100A service.

With both our Volts charging, our hot tub running, and a few other moderate load things in the house running (IE, stove/oven) we are pushing the limits of our panel. I’ve gone up to 110A before for short periods of time and the breaker didn’t trip (as designed), but I suspect some day I’ll accidentally go over for a little too long and trip it. :wink:

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Early 60s construction here, so 100A service. That steam generator is the most egregious user. Otherwise I have decent margin with the current service. I’m sure I could manage to blow the main if I fired up the dryer and oven while the steam room was on, though.

With the Volt charging and that ~3kw HVAC load (based on comparing it’s bubble to the Volt) you must be right on the bleeding edge of the 100A service when the steam generator is running.

Those things run fairly sporadically though, no? The nice thing about breakers versus a fuse is that they’re a little more tolerant to short term excursions past their rating, within reason.

Don’t forget that a 200 amp panel doesn’t mean 200 amp service…

If rural at least, it comes down to the size of your transformer. One thinks they’re set until they find out they have a 15kW transformer with 200 amp service.

Well, you can get 24kW out of a 100A service at unity power factor, and as you mentioned there’s some margin in there for the breaker’s trip curve. I’ve never managed to pop the main breaker, but I probably could given the right circumstances.

Replying to oshawapilot:
Or you’ll eventually fry your panel. Really shouldn’t take it over 80% of that 100A for very long. Copper loves to oxidize into all sorts of colors when it gets hot. Keep an eye on it.

Our biggest current draw is the 6KW electric dryer. I only have 110V charging on my EV, so can’t even come close to the dryer with that. Total load I’ve seen go to 11-12KW, but that’s rare. More often the max is 9-10KW. We have 100A main breaker, although panel is rated to 200A, which if I got a Tesla would prob have to go to. When we got solar, Solar City found our old panel was fried, so they replaced it for us, which was very nice of them!

Electric dryer @6kW. It seems that Sense sees the heating element only, not the motor.
Sense still doesn’t see my Chevy Volt (only 4 kW with the charger I use) after several months. That’s easily my biggest electricity user, though the OP’s question was about power.

26kW electric boiler for hot water (fast!)

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Yikes! I think you hold the prize.