Timed Dehumidifier for Energy Savings
I'm always looking for way to save money and decided to focus on a big energy abuser in our household - for this blog post - our dehumidifier during the summer time. My problem is an old inefficient dehumidifier combined with summertime energy price spikes from the real time pricing program (RRTP) with ComEd. Background: 20 Year Old Dehumidifier We had a dehumidifier that was almost 20 years old. It still "worked", but was really bad at reliably removing moisture from our basement. It had gotten to the point where it would run 24/7 constantly, freeze up from time to time, and remove moisture at a slow rate. I had to empty the bucket about every 4 days. My target moisture level in our dry basement was 45%, but that unit would only keep it about 55%. We recently joined ComEd's real time electricity pricing program and have saved a lot of money ( http://blog.trebacz.com/2013/03/comed-electrical-rrtp-savings-program-6.html ). I knew that a 24/7 dehumidifier (esse