So Cal Edison increases rebates to $300

For SCE (Southern California Edison) customers who purchase a qualifying variable speed pump between September 3, 2010 and the end of the year, the consumer rebate has been increased from $200 to $300.

This increase was announced in a September 2nd email by Larry Tabizon, Program Manager for SCE’s Home Energy Efficiency Rebate Program. Another email sent just a day earlier reported a $350 rebate, but it was later revised to $300.

The rebate application, according to Tabizon, is currently being updated to reflect this change.

Now is a great time to invest in a pump that will pay for itself in energy savings.

Pool motor efficiency

A couple of years ago, Pentair introduced a motor to the pool industry that is a great improvement in efficiency as compared to what we have been calling “energy efficient” motors. This motor is referred to as a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) and it is used on their IntelliFlo line of pumps.
To truly appreciate why this style of motor is more efficient, one needs to understand what a power factor is.
First, all motors use magnets in order to turn a rotor. They work on the principle that opposites attract. Thus, the south pole is attracted to the north pole and vice versa. If you were to take a large horseshoe magnet and place a boy scout style compass in between its ends, the compass needle would spin to align itself with the horseshoe magnet’s magnetic field. If you could then reverse the polarity of the horseshoe magnet, the compass would spin 18o degrees and realign itself. If you could continuously reverse the polarity of the horseshoe magnet, the compass would keep spinning. This is the basic idea behind how a motor works.
So, how do you reverse the polarity of a magnet? One way is to use an alternating current to create an electromagnet. The following graph shows an alternating current. The current (and voltage) alternates from a maximum positive value down through zero to a minimum negative value and back up in a continual cycle according to the familiar sine wave pattern:

As the voltage and current alternate, so too does the polarity of the magnetic field. By using this type of continually reversing electromagnet, the compass needle (or rotor) will continuously spin inside the magnetic field.
An interesting thing happens when you pass an alternating current through a coil of wire that you use to create an electromagnet. The coil imposes a restriction upon the power. The voltage passes through faster than does the current. In other words, the current is said to “lag” behind the voltage. This means that the peak voltage no longer occurs in sync with the peak current. The peak current lags behind by a  small amount of time. This lag is indicated by the phase angle φ  in the following graph.  

This is very significant. From Ohm’s law, recall that Power equals voltage times amps (P=EI). This means that at any given time, you are to multiply the voltage value in the above graph times the current value to calculate the power value. Notice that when voltage and current are both positive, the power will be positive too. Similarly, since a negative times a negative is also a positive value, when both the voltage and current are negative, the power will again be positive.
But when the current lags the voltage, there will be times when one will be positive and the other negative. In these cases, the power will be negative. (Since a positive times a negative is negative.) This can be seen in the above graph where the power sine wave dips below the zero line. In these cases, the motor is no longer converting electrical power into mechanical power to turn a pump, it is turning mechanical power into electrical power. It has for this period of time, become a generator and is trying to feed power back to your power company. Your power company doesn’t like this, nor do they pay you for it. It pollutes the power in the neighborhood by screwing up their nice sine wave power and you simply pay for power that you don’t use.
To counter this problem, motor companies build “energy efficient” motors that capture this power that induction motors try to stuff back down the power company’s lines and store it in a capacitor so it can be reused by the motor. This is a small advance in efficiency.
A giant step forward was taken with the permanent magnet synchronous motor. With this style of motor, you don’t use a coil to create an electromagnet. You use permanent magnets instead. Since there is no inductive electromagnet, there is no current lag. This means that the voltage and current stay in sync. Since they are in sync, they will either both be positive or both zero or both negative. There will never be a case in which one is positive and the other is negative. Because of this, their product (the power) will always be positive as well.
The bottom line: efficiency
An induction motor is around 20-30 % efficient. An “energy efficient” motor (with a capacitor) is around 40-65% efficient. A permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is around 90% efficient.
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So Cal Edison’s 2010 Incentive Program

In 2010, Southern California Edison incentive program applies only to variable-speed pumps. (The two-speed incentive is now a thing of the past.) The program pays the home owner a $200 incentive and the participating retailer or contractor $100 when a variable speed pump is installed.

To participate in this program, pool retailers and contractors need to sign and mail a participation agreement to SCE.

Home owners just need to submit a rebate claim form along with a copy of their invoice to SCE.

Pool guys wash hands after using the restroom

We had some people over for the holidays and after they left, my wife went to tidy up our guest bathroom. Before they arrived, she had put a  new carefully folded Christmas towel on the rack. Although all of our guests used the bathroom at some point in the evening (some more than once), she discovered that neither that towel nor others on the washstand had been touched.

None of our guests had washed their hands!

Failure to wash one’s hands is not all that uncommon among the general population. I see many men leave public restrooms at movie theatres, airports, and sports arenas without first washing their hands.  It is such a common site that I generally don’t think much about it.

An unusual observation

Last year while attending the Western Pool and Spa show, I noticed something strange. Every single pool man that I saw in the restroom, over the course of the three day event, washed their hands before leaving.

Why would these pool men wash their hands 100% of the time, while in the general population, the rate is much less?

Then I recalled my CPO (Certified Pool Operator) training, and I began to reflect on how unique a pool guy’s expertise is. Pool guys know about both sanitization and filtration, and both of these are key.

Sanitization

In the CPO course we learned that E. coli is a strain of bacteria that lives naturally and harmlessly in the lower intestines of  healthy humans.  Problems arise, however, if E. coli gets ingested. Then, it is out of place in the entrance to our digestive system and causes problems such as diarrhea, nausea, and stomach cramps.

Now, some people might think that a well placed piece of toilet paper will keep the E. coli that is in human waste from contaminating one’s fingers. If their hands look clean they may figure they don’t need to wash them. But, to see why this logic is flawed,  let’s look at another area of pool guy expertise.

Filtration

E. coli is a bacteria that is about 1 micron in diameter; this is incredibly tiny.  It is so small that it can pass through even the finest DE pool filter that can only filter down to about 4 microns. It will also easily pass through a paper pool cartridge filter that can only filter to about 15 microns. Now, let us assume that toilet paper can filter as well as a paper cartridge filter (even though it probably is not this good). To a 1 micron E. coli bacteria, a 15 micron filter looks as wide open as an open garage door looks to a human. The bacteria just goes right through. I wonder if most doctors and nurses trained in sanitization, but in not filtration, even think about this.

The pool guy’s unique expertise

The pool guy’s unique combination of knowledge of sanitization combined with knowledge of filtration probably explains why all the pool guys at the convention washed their hands after using the restroom. As pool guys, we need to share our unique expertise with a wider audience. Public health depends upon it.  

Here’s to a healthier 2010!

Case study: Variable speed on Jandy RS

Yesterday I had a chance to install a variable speed pump on a pool that is controlled by a Jandy RS system. Now, this was an older system that uses the 52 pin board and was, therefore, not compatible with Jandy’s variable speed pump. While some of Jandy’s e-pumps come with an upgrade chip for the RS control system, the chip will not fit in a 52 pin board – it only fits in boards made within the last year or two. Thus, if I were to use Jandy’s e-pump, I would have to upgrade the board. This was too expensive.
Instead, I chose to use a Pentair Intelliflo VS3050. This is the pump that used to be called the Intelliflo 4 x 160. The VS in the name indicates Variable Speed (as opposed to their other pump that is variable flow). The 4 stood for 4 speeds and the 160 stood for the max gpm.
To use the VS3050 with the Jandy RS system I had to used Intellicom II. This is a major advance over the first generation Intellicom. This is a small cell phone size adapter that converts the 24 v relay outputs of the Jandy system to RS485 communication protocol that selects the pump speed.
The Pentair reps will tell you that the Intellicom requires the use of a separate auxiliary per speed. This isn’t quite true, and if you did it that way, it would be complicated for the customer to use.
Here is how I setup my install. I set the following speeds on the pump. (I set the speeds before connecting the controller):
Speed 1: I set this to a speed fast enough to operate the suction pool vacuum.  Pressing the “Filter Pump” button on the Jandy activates this speed.
Speed 2: A super low speed for filtration, This is just fast enough to break the plane of the water with the skimmer wier. The “Low Speed” button on the Jandy activates this speed. (Turn on dip switch 2 to set “Aux 2” to “Low Speed.”) This is the only extra auxiliary that is necessary to use that is not used with a single speed pump.
Speed 3: A speed suited for the 400,000 BTU heater --somewhere close to 40 gpm. This is higher than the low speed setting. Imagine what would happen if the heater was turned on when the “Low Speed” was selected. The pressure switch would be marginal and the heater would not have the minimum flow that the heater required. To avoid this, I used the “Electric Heater” relay output on the top of the Jandy board near the actuator outputs to activate Speed 3. The Logic of the Intellicom is such that it always selects the higher of the speed number if more than one is selected. In other words, if both speed 2 (low speed) and speed 3 (heater speed) are selected, it will run at speed 3.  This protects the heater. It is also fool proof. The customer can’t select the wrong speed.
Speed 4: This is a high speed for the spa jets. It is really cool how I activate this speed. I used the “spare aux” relay output located on the back of the RS control board. To get this relay output to activate when the spa is turned on, set dip switch 6 to “on". (This does not work on Rev. G or earlier chips--you must upgrade those chips to take advantage of this feature.) This way, any time the spa is switched on, the pump automatically goes to speed 4. The customer doesn’t have to do anything different. They just press the spa button as usual and the jets come on high.
Two good things about this installation:

1. First is saves energy. The customer should save around $900 per year.
2. Second, it is no more complicated for the customer than would be a two-speed pump. While the pump itself has more speeds and is more adjustable, all the complexity is kept in the background. It is very simple for the user.

May is National Water Safety Month

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Edison may end two-speed pump rebates

Southern California Edison has been offering rebates for both two-speed pumps and variable speed pumps. Starting sometime in 2010, it may discontinue rebates for two-speed pumps, and issue them only for variable speed pumps.

Meanwhile, other states are following California’s lead and are either considering or have already adopted energy-efficiency regulations similar to Title-20.

In my opinion, variable speed pumps are not ready for mainstream use.  They are still too complicated and buggy in terms of nuisance alarms and the frequent need to reset the processor to clear such alarms.

I see a wide open need for a ultra-efficient motor that is as simple as a two-speed.  So far it looks like Century New E Plus Centurion fits the bill.  See my youtube video for an installation and energy saving calculations.