GE Green Bean open source smart appliance adapter.

[electromotive]

Anyone still working with the GreenBean and your GE heat pump water heater?     What functionality are you implementing with controlling or monitoring it?

I would like to understand and data log the WH operating modes, temperatures and component status.   I have noted it running the resistance elements sometimes, even when in eHeat mode, wondering why.  I suppose it could be lack of abundance source heat from a cold & dry basement in winter.   Sometimes I see long recovery times, other times it seems very fast (running the resistance elements?)...   Maybe I should disconnect the resistance elements....

I have started using the WH for waste heat recovery and the control I want to add is to run the WH when there is additional available heat or humidity to be recovered.  I may integrate it with a wintertime ventilation system, sending stale air through the WH to recover energy and then exhausting outdoors, with a matched fresh air supply into the house.   I would also like to duct shower steam to it, there's a lot of energy there being dumped outside.   

Currently the exhaust from a conventional electric clothes dryer is ducted next to the WH, and I would like to run the WH in concert with the dryer.  The WH is also installed next to a relatively in-efficient gas hydrionic boiler, to use the waste heat from that.   Some of the time, I think..., the water heater is already running at appropriate times to use the waste heat.   Someone showered or washed clothes, creating demand for hot water, and then they put some clothes in the dryer.   Or showers use hot water in the morning or evening, when the furnace runs.    But it would be neat to actively control it.   If the WH stores up an additional 5 or 10 dF, the hot water loving family will not complain, and it should reduce the WH energy consumption.

A simple control I am thinking try first:   offset the T2 (tank temperature) thermistor by adding a resistance in series with a relay, causing the WH control to see lower tank temperature and turn on the heat pump, if there is increased heat or humidity available.  Making a note of the temperature and resistance shown in the component status screens,  the T2 sensor has a range of 4 to 8 kOhms, and the slope is about 9 dF per 1kOhm.   We'll see if this causes any diagnostic codes to set?      Or use the GreenBean to increase the setpoint.

Thanks,  Dale

I'm not working on Green Bean, but I've got a new Rheem water heater that *should* be convertable into one of the network enabled smart heaters.