DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

In January we put a timer-based cutoff switch on our well pump, to prevent the pump from running (and consuming expensive electricity) during peak hours, noon - 6:00PM.

In April, we set our clocks forward by 1 hour. Well, most of them. Not the one in the wellhouse. Doh!

I discovered this at 2:00 PM today. The pump timer was pretty sure it was 1:00 PM. This means it has been shutting off our well pump not from noon to 6:00, but 1:00 PM - 7:00 PM.

Fortunately we don’t use much water between noon and 1:00 PM, so the pump (which works on demand) would have had little reason to run at that time. But on those oddball days it was running… ouch. Our well pump consumes nearly 2 kW of electricity and is therefore almost capable of zeroing out the PV array’s output. Between noon and 6:00, that’s expensive power, not in the sense that we would be paying for it so much as in the sense that every watt we use cannot be sold back to the utility.