Energy cost of maintaining an aquarium?

yhbae

yhbae

AC Members
Aug 5, 2003
1,423
0
0
Canada
www.aqadvisor.com
Is there a way to figure out how much money we spend on the electricity cost of your aquarium?

Calculating cost for filter and lights are easy. You know the wattage rating for each, and you know how long you run those per day hence per month. Just multiply KW usage by your local electricity cost (little more complicated if you don't have linear scale cost but still doable).

But what about the heater? This depends on the water volume but also the ambient temperature surrounding the tank. Is there any know formula that allows us to calculate total energy needed to keep water temperature stable at a given condition?

And I guess if you insulate 3 walls, that makes it more interesting... :)
 
Just get a Kill-A-Watt meter or a PowerAngel and plug everything running your tank into a pwoer strip, and run it through the meter...over a 24hr period, it should give you a good idea of how much energy its sucking up. As far as heater usage, I usually assume a 50% duty cycle, mostly because I'm loo lazy to sit there and watch it to get an idea of whether thats even close or not. Like you say, the duty cycle will obviously vary with surface agitation, tank temp, ambient temp, whether its covered, insulated in any way, and the size of the heater.
 
sploke said:
Just get a Kill-A-Watt meter or a PowerAngel and plug everything running your tank into a pwoer strip, and run it through the meter...over a 24hr period, it should give you a good idea of how much energy its sucking up. As far as heater usage, I usually assume a 50% duty cycle, mostly because I'm loo lazy to sit there and watch it to get an idea of whether thats even close or not. Like you say, the duty cycle will obviously vary with surface agitation, tank temp, ambient temp, whether its covered, insulated in any way, and the size of the heater.
Click to expand...

I'll have to look into those meters. It done over 24 hours then most of the variable factors should be taken into account.
 
Looking at Kill-a-Watt devices right now - its not obvious if it adds up consumption over time or this thing only reports the WH rating at that instant. If it does only that instant, then its not very useful since you already know which devices are running at that time...

Will read more into it... :D
 
cellodaisy said:
Would this help? http://www.kernsanalysis.com/HeaterCalculator.cgi
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link.

I actually came across this link before. What I wasn't sure was whether the recommended heater size there is the minimum heater needed to keep water temperature stable, or it is the size of the heater that will stay on 100% all the time to keep water temperature at the desirable level. (Or are those two the same thing? lol)
 
cellodaisy said:
Would this help? http://www.kernsanalysis.com/HeaterCalculator.cgi
Click to expand...
Great link! :thm:

According to this, I have a minimum heater wattage of 67W, but I run a 200W, thus it takes 1.9 hours to bring the tank water up from room temp to tank temp.

However, I temp match the water for tank maintenance, but still interesting, and this could be used as a worsecase scenario.

Interestingly, when I was without power for 11 days, I ran the Gen for 1 hour and off 2 hours. This kept the house at a low of 62 and a high of 67 using the furnace. With the tanks on for that same hour it kpe my tanks around 72 degrees with that 200W heater in a 90G tank

FWIW - NH energy is $0.11 per KWH, VT is $0.12 per KWH and NY is $0.22 per KWH (for reference), but I think the highest i the country is HW at 34 cents and the lowest is missisippi if I recall correctly at 9 cents.

These data were a part of the Army's energy Audit done last month. I can get all the state if wanted ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom