In misc.industry.utilities.electric Phil Sherrod wrote:

| So regardless of the voltage, amps, wattage, size or shape of the heating
| element, as long as the heater is able to supply enough energy to match the
| loss (76 watts in my case), the total energy used over a long period will be
| the same; but the duty cycle will change. You could put a 76 watt heater
| inside the tank, and it would use the same long-term energy as a 4500 watt
| heater. It would just have a longer duty cycle -- 100% rather than 1.6%.

But you're still losing 76 watts of energy. The question is, is there a
way to recover that cheaply. In cold weather, if you could recover 100%
thay would be 76 watts less (or equivalent) energy used for other purposes.

Also, how much would these figures change if you put the water heater on a
timer to ensure that it only heated during night?

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| Phil Howard KA9WGN | http://linuxhomepage.com/ http://ham.org/ |
| (first name) at ipal.net | http://phil.ipal.org/ http://ka9wgn.ham.org/ |
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