Depending on where you live in Australia and the local climate, your swimming pool pump might need to operate for up to 10 hours per day – or even longer – for adequate filtration and chlorination. Naturally you’ll want to minimise your energy consumption and costs, so is it best to run your pump during the day or night?
The answer depends on a few different aspects.
Considering energy use and efficiency
The choice between day or night pump use depends somewhat on your choice of energy rates. If you have flat rate energy pricing then there’s more flexibility to choose when the pump should run. If you have time-of-use electricity, it will make sense to run the pump at night when electricity is cheaper – that is, if the pump isn’t too noisy for your neighbours while they’re trying to sleep. The pump may need to run longer in summer, which means that even night-time use may verge onto shoulder pricing at times.
What if I have solar panels?
That’s excellent, and they can help to bring overall energy consumption down. However, it’s important to understand you probably won’t be able to run your pool pump entirely on solar power. On cloudy days of low solar output your panels may not provide enough power for the pool pump, and it will draw power from the grid at the daytime retail rate. On very cloudy days it may be more cost effective to defer daytime running and run at night instead on off peak electricity.
Chlorine levels
UV from sunlight rapidly destroys chlorine. If you only run your pool during the day you may not be able to build up an effective chlorine level, and you may experience algae problems. For this reason we recommend running the pool at night for a few hours, even if you have solar panels. This is especially important in summer, with long days of high UV.
Wondering how to balance all these factors?
Pooled can take all the guesswork and estimation out of the daytime/night-time pool pump equation. This automated system operates your pool equipment according to the time of day and time or year, electricity prices, electricity grid conditions, weather forecast and more, to optimally balance clear swimming water with minimised energy consumption. It will also check weather conditions to avoid running pools on cloudy days when solar panels may not be performing, and switch to cheaper night time running instead. This intelligent system can significantly reduce your pool energy use when paired with our Advanced Water Chemistry for clean and more efficient swimming pool management.
If you’re considering Pooled for your existing pool, the great news is that it can be retrofitted for most residential swimming pools.
