Intro

Up yonder here in Quebec, we have a subsidy from the provincial electric utility provider, Hydro-Quebec, to install an Electric Thermal Storage furnace from Steffes, optionally combined with an ultra-efficient heat pump. The model I have installed is called Serenity, model number 4210. https://steffes.com/ets/serenity/

There are quite a few settings on the furnace's micro controller that can be changed with the simple three button interface. Several default settings provided by the installation weren't to my liking, and so I decided to dig a little bit to understand how to tweak and optimize it to my preference.

It took me a while to discover there is a difference between subset of configurations easily available to us as end-users/customers, and a more complete set of configurations called locations. There exists a procedure to enter into those two configurations, but the procedure for locations is normally known only to the installers/technicians. Digging around the Steffes technical library led me to discover the procedure.

Visit the Steffes Technical Library.

Note

Let's refer to the subset of configurations that are known to customers by way of customer facing documentation, as configs, and those that are normally known only by technicians and discoverable in the technical documentation from Steffes (also usually only referred to by technicians), as locations.

Configs are settings prefaced with a C, such as C001, C002, and so on.

Locations are settings prefaced with an L, such as L001, L002, and so on.

Since configs are a subset of locations, all configs are actually contained in the set of locations, but their numerical value -- 001, 002, etc. -- are not necessarily the same.

For context, some of the default settings I did not like:

  1. The furnace would enter Peak mode on weekends when I am signed up for Rate Flex D billing.

  2. According to information on Rate Flex D with Hydro-Quebec, there won't ever be any peak events scheduled for Rate Flex D customers on weekends. Note: Rate Flex D with Winter Credit Option do have peak events scheduled on weekends.

  3. The furnace was a little too aggressive on charging the brick core to 100%, I felt it a waste of energy since the heat pump can still contribute most of the time and peak events are at most 4 hours, a full charge is probably not needed unless it is around -25 celsius or lower outside.

  4. The furnace was set to Anticipated Peak mode in the middle of the day, every day, I felt it unnecessary for the purposes of Rate Flex D; there are only two billing rates, a peak rate, and off-peak rate. I wanted my furnace to charge normally between the two peaks each day. It seems Anticipated Peak is suited for when there might be a 3rd or more billing rates that can happen during the day, in other countries.

  5. Historically, some peak events I've had in the past occurred when the outside temperature was only -10 celsius. The heat-pump would engage at this temperature during peak events due to the cut off being lower than -10, and I figured that I might as well try to use stored heat in the furnace as much as possible as electricity is more than five times as expensive during peak hours.

To be continued...