When the subject of off grid dishwasher comes up you are likely to think of two things. A) a monster off grid power system to handle the load, or B) a delightful helper or indentured servant to do this chore. Both are possible solutions, but they will either consume your budget, or wreck a relationship. Neither is desirable. There is a happy middle ground solution that we have used our whole time up here.
Fortunately, thanks to free power time, you can plan on a large appliance like this if you routinely run a generator, or have excess wind power available and can dump a good chunk of power. Not having the wind system yet, we run the generator once an a while. The dishwasher is a Kenmore “ultrawash” that we purchased in 1997. Newer units might have better power statistics, but this one was here and easy to measure.
- Ran full load on shortest “water miser” wash.
- Total time was a little over 2 hours. 1 hour 35 minutes mostly active washing, 25 minutes inactive drying (3W).
- Active wash time power was 1.35kwh, and the overall power was 1.37kwh.
- Test was run on generator power, not inverter.
This little luxury item consumes the lion’s share of our peak solar production of 2kwh on the longest sunny summer days! However, if charging the batteries or running the generator for other reasons, this load can always sneak in for an hour and a half.
I’ve added the data to the data you can use table. Do you have a newer dishwasher? What are its power requirements? Or, do you have a unique dishwashing solution? Share with everyone below in the comments!
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You mention running the dishwasher on generator power not inverter power. Do you expect to see a difference between the two modes? We have a small counter top dishwasher given to us which is just right for two people but maybe not for a whole family of four. Soon I will be able to let you know what it uses as power.( smile) I will let you know.
I didn’t expect much difference between the generator and inverter. The rule around here, is that big loads are run during “free power” time since we don’t consider them on the power budget.
I wonder if you would reduce power consumption if you were to feed the dishwasher with warmed water. Dinner dishes being the biggest load or perhaps the accumulation of the whole days use occurs at the end of the day so you would also have some solar heat gain on a tank filled especially for the dishwasher. The biggest power draw would be the water heater built into the appliance followed by the motor. Shifting to a sine wave inverter would give you some savings in power consumption so maybe you could also save electrical power by using preheat water using a solar heat collector or maybe coils near your wood burning stove.