Degree Day Question

BDR529

What is being used to figure degree days? Other than a outside themometer that recoeds high and low then doing the math.

Years ago Honeywell made a specific DD meter and some othes I do not recall.

Seen some on line platforms, log into the weather tower that might be 30 miles away.

Surprised this area of forcasting is is null of a specific stand alone DD meter. Are they called something different nowadays?

STEVEusaPA

I use a spreadsheet, and account for wind in mid Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, until mid March.
Then plug the daily DDays for Heat & Hot Water into my database for delivery/forecasting
I grab High/Low from http://www.wunderground.com/history/

BDR529

Thank you for the info!

JUGHNE

Steve, how do you apply the wind factor to the HDD's?

STEVEusaPA

JUGHNE said:

Steve, how do you apply the wind factor to the HDD's?

Honestly by years and years of analyzing the data, just a feeling. What I've noticed is if you watch one customers DDay thru a season, you'll see the DDay's and K factor fluctuate. A lot on a leaky home, not some much on a tight home. You also see elderly people racking up DDays' in September & June.

I usually never change a customers DDay Interval or their K Factor throughout the season.

Going thru the summer (many summers) I am able to assign the first delivery of the season with a specific phrase like 'DDay Next' & 'DDay Out'. Customers labeled 'DDay Out' don't get their first delivery until the computer says they should be out, so it ends up being over 150 gallons, same with DDay Next. Then thru out the season I keep a running list of people needing over 150 gallons so I can group them together for efficient deliveries, and/or save them for when I'm in the same area hitting a will call. This way I'm not constantly adjusting the DDays/Kfactors, and when there's a mild winter or a cold snap I don't have any run outs.
Of course we're all playing for second. The true/best solution (not affordable yet) is simple wifi tank gauge that we can monitor, and fill the customers tank 5-10 days before a runout-maximizing gallons.

Back to wind/wind chill. That link I provided will show a graph of the wind speed and wind gusts for the previous day. I'll tend to ignore gusts unless they are substantial, or heavy all day.
Take a look at this chart. Let's say the high was 34° and the low was 18° I wound knock 5° off and enter 34° for the high, and 13° for the low into my DDay spreadsheet. This way I'm racking up more DDay's. A totally automated system like the big companies have totally misses this and when they get a cold snap, and their DDays/KFactors are still set back to milder weather, they have a tremendous amount of run outs.
Like I said, it's just a feeling/intuition. Probably easier to explain it day by day.

JUGHNE

I see you put a lot of effort into this and now realize this is for oil deliveries.

I use HDD simply for the ratio of monthly gas consumption to actually HDD as a method to determine if system improvements have increased efficiency.


So far the best improvements have been from the high of:
1.48 (936 HDD Jan 06 1388cu ft)
down to .66 (1268 HDD Feb 08 839 cu ft).

There was some low hanging fruit to change on this system.

Jamie Hall

There are times, @STEVEusaPA , when I wish you were doing my oil deliveries... I like your approach, and there are times also when I have to call my oil company (which, I hasten to add, is very reliable and responsive) and remind that folks, it's been cold and a little windier than usual, would you please come and fill the tank? Of course, having a tank which only holds 300 or so gallons, and a structure which can quite happily go through 40 or 50 gallons of that on a cold windy day, does make things more interesting.

I have k data going back over a twenty years now on the main place I care for, which is best described as somewhat draughty -- and, worse, in a very exposed location -- and it is quite astonishing how much variation there is.

STEVEusaPA

@Jamie Hall I'll deliver, if you can handle the delivery charge from Philly…lol.
Yeah the wind really sucks the heat out of leaky buildings (not thermodynamically correct explanation).
Large companies can’t really fine tune their DDay programs (and they have too many customers) to account for this and end up having run outs.
On cold snaps, their techs spend/waste a lot of time on 'no heat' calls that turn out to be out of oil calls, tipping 5 gallons cans until the truck can show up.
Like I stated earlier, until tank monitoring becomes practical and affordable, this is the best we have.

STEVEusaPA

@JUGHNE i think you can still apply the theory if you want to track weather (every day). I can send you my simple spreadsheet, just pm me your email.
Keep in mind many email programs will flag or put into spam, emails containing Excel SS, as embedded macros (I have none) could damage (hack) a Windows system. But you can right click on the SS and scan it with your anti-virus software.

Of course, it could just be overkill for your situation. Looks like you made some great improvements and are saving some money.

JUGHNE

Thanks for the offer, I think I will continue as I have.
The wind in Nebr. is a constant factor, however often at the lowest temp, occasionally -20, the less the wind may be.

gennady

We are using heating degree-days to evaluate the effect of heating upgrades/ boiler replacements and so on. Any changes to heating system can be evaluated by fuel usage per degree day. Also, we are using cloud based petrometer oil gage level, it has build in alarms and internet access to history and current data. https://www.petro-meter.com/petro-meter-i329-wifi-gauge-transmitter.html