Is there a way to look at beestat data to determine the most efficient settings for when my particular system should run in stage 1 vs. switch over to stage 2? I’m new to geothermal, and new to ecobee and beestat, so I don’t have a ton of data yet, but so far my stage 1 and stage 2 cooling runtimes seem to be about equal. Maybe I’m wrong, but intuitively I’d expect more efficiency if stage 1 ran more often, but I don’t know how to find the optimum ratio or settings to achieve this.
The guide on finding balance point is awesome- if there were similar guides to find the best settings in other categories (like staging), that would be great as well.
I suppose it could be useful, but I don’t really have any measure of what’s “best”. Does best mean lowest energy usage? Least runtime? Most comfortable? A mix of those and more?
I think the best course of action is to first determine which of these things is most important to you, then tweak how you see fit. Beestat can definitely help you visualize how your system is running so you can adjust until you get things just right.
As far as general suggestions go I don’t have many. I have a two-stage system but have not done much in the way of optimizing things. Here are a couple ideas:
Your system should run almost 24/7 on the hottest day of the year if it is sized properly.
Your system should not be short cycling (more than 3-4 cycles per hour)
You should run stage 1 longer if you want to focus on reducing humidity
Stage 1 typically runs at like 70% capacity
I would love to have a nice writeup done here on this community from someone who really gets into this stuff and is willing to try and simplify it down. I personally wish I had more knowledge about properly using staging.
Some of the new metrics (in development) should also be useful here. I can extract lots of interesting variables and display them and how they compare to other similar systems.
I’ve been running and open loop Geothermal system since November 2008. Previous to that I was heating with propane and cooling with open windows at night and closed windows during the day
Most Geo systems run from a closed loop using an anti-freeze solution . Mine runs from ground water that is extracted from one well then returned into the ground from another well.
Setting them up and tuning them can be tricky depending on how “smart” your thermometer is. I switched to an Ecobee when my original thermostats touch screen started to fail and any change became a chore but with the old one I could specify exactly how long I wanted stage 1 to run before stage 2 kicked in but I cannot do that with the Ecobee. I have to set it up to start in stage 2 and run for a specific amount of time before reverting to Stage 1 which is completely backwards to what I want but that said, the Ecobee was still the best option I could find for running a 2 stage geothermal system with electrical emergency heating.
How best to set it up depends on the system and in that regards, everyone will be different. I had three installers come in and give me estimates of how many tons my system should be and all but one oversized the unit by one to two tons. In my case it’s still bigger than it probably should be. How best to set up your Geo requires trial and error experimentation.
I have an advantage knowing how it’s running as I have kept detailed records of my hydro use since it was installed so none of this is guesswork. The longest time my system ran to cool the house on the hottest day of the year in my area this year was 8.17 hours with the average temperature that day being 80.39 F. The longest time it has ever run for heating was 21.5 hours on Jan 3, 2014 where the high for that day was 12 F and the low -8 F but that is the exception. The coldest times for most winters in my area the unit runs 14-16 hours.
My “issue” with the reports generated by Beestat is with my Heat score comparisons. If I set it up for Global / All I have a respectable Cooling score of 81 and a respectable resist score of 73 but my heat score is 4 ( Four ) ! If I change it to Nearby / Very Similar I get to 7 and IDK how anyone running Geo could do much better simply because the heat extracted from the ground and enhanced by the heat pump then sent through the central heating system can never equal Gas or Oil in the time it takes to raise the temperature in the house.
My question is…if I am seeing a heat score of 7 from Nearby / Very Similar and it’s comparing only 14 homes does that mean one of those homes is seeing a much higher number than I am or all all Geo systems coming in low ?
In the big scheme of things, it doesn’t matter as I know the unit is working and the 5200 kw it uses on average every year to heat and cool is ( for me ) considerably less than what I was paying to only heat with Propane ( and it cools much better than open windows at night ). It works out to approx 66% cheaper than Propane which was, at the time I had the house built, the only real option I had
My comparison scores are similar and I suspect it’s because it compares to combustion-heated homes and only compares based on runtime or slope of heating curve, both would look better for a fossil furnace, but overlooks the obvious difference in efficiency.
Are you running a 2 stage Geo heat pump and if yes is Beestat showing you have 2 stages for heating and cooling?
My report for Temperature Profile analysis only shows stage 1 and 2 for Cooling. Heating is a single line even though the Thermostat Summary shows both stages for heating and cooling and records both in the daily bar graph but Temperature Profile only shows stage one results for heating and I’m interested to see if any other Geo 2 stage users show only stage one for heating as well or if it’s just me.
The short answer is yes, it shows me a line for stages 1 and 2, for both heating and cooling. But, I also have an electric heat strip auxillary, for which there is no line. I suspect Beestat may need to see ae threshold number of hours of runtime before it shows up. My aux almost never runs (of course by design) and I remember my stage 2 lime didn’t show up right away either. I’ve only had this system for a little over a year though, so it’s always possible my limited data has an outside role in that.
(Ignore the cooling graph- had some bad data in there.)
And I figured my setup was uncommon but even when I select “global” comparisons, I only get grouped with 3 other homes. So I agree, for me I guess that is one of the lesser useful features of Beestat, through no fault of Beestat.
