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Half the article wasn't about a/c efficiency it was that HFC is more of a greenhouse gas than CO2, and was agreed to be phased out. Is there really an HFC replacement - what is it? I wasnt aware.
Not for nothing, but ain't greenhouse gases only the short term problem? The Earth radiates a fixed amount of energy into space every year. But when we produce electricity etc. no matter how we do it, more than half of the energy escapes as heat - a byproduct of boiling the water or whatever! This isn't sustainable in the long run either! We are basically raising the temperature of the atmosphere even without greenho…
As long as we still have cold seasons, it is safe to assume that solar inputs are dominating our own.
What other ways can consumers compare the efficiency of A/C units? I would think some standardized testing and labels would be required.
> The Lawrence Berkeley study argues that even a 30 percent improvement in efficiency could avoid the peak load equivalent of about 1,500 power plants by 2030. Okay, but where is this 30% jump in efficiency going to come from? That seems like a pretty big leap!
* A lot of home conditioners are fighting the weather in conditions with poor insulation, running when nobody is home, or running in rooms when people are in different parts of the house.
* Office air conditioners are often set too cold, subjectively speaking, sometimes resulting in workers bringing sweaters or even space heaters to their desks. This is shockingly common. Multi-zone cooling can make things more uniform, and if you can get people to stop using space heaters during the summer, that can make a big difference. Gender is supposedly a huge factor in temperature preferences, and offices are set to men's cooler preferences. In some locations this is exacerbated by the fact that men wear suits and ties while the women wear skirts and weather-appropriate tops.
Personally, I want an air conditioner system that isn't set to a specific temperature, but instead reduces the extreme temperatures outside. So instead of keeping it set at 22 degrees, maybe it would be set to 22 degrees when it's 27 degrees out, but the AC goes to 25 degrees when it's 35 degrees out. I find this more comfortable, because there's less of a shock when going outside or coming inside.
Not for nothing, but ain't greenhouse gases only the short term problem? The Earth radiates a fixed amount of energy into space every year. But when we produce electricity etc. no matter how we do it, more than half of the energy escapes as heat - a byproduct of boiling the water or whatever! This isn't sustainable in the long run either! We are basically raising the temperature of the atmosphere even without greenho…
The slightly warmer planet cools off faster (Newton's law of cooling). The heat doesn't just statically build up over time. As long as we still have cold seasons, it is safe to assume that solar inputs are dominating our own.
The waste heat from solar panels is just the energy from the sun, less whatever gets turned into electricity. No new energy was created - if there was, you could just create a perpetual motion machine to solve the problem.
Not for nothing, but ain't greenhouse gases only the short term problem? The Earth radiates a fixed amount of energy into space every year. But when we produce electricity etc. no matter how we do it, more than half of the energy escapes as heat - a byproduct of boiling the water or whatever! This isn't sustainable in the long run either! We are basically raising the temperature of the atmosphere even without greenho…
Half the article wasn't about a/c efficiency it was that HFC is more of a greenhouse gas than CO2, and was agreed to be phased out. Is there really an HFC replacement - what is it? I wasnt aware.
I hear ammonia and propane: http://www.drawdown.org/solutions/materials/refrigerant-mana...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can be very effective, they just look ugly and don't increase a house's value. http://atomictoasters.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/swamp-c... Authority: I live in Colorado.
and can even lead to mold
Could higher efficiency cooling be done by using more evaporative cooling systems (Swamp Coolers)[0] rather than traditional AC units? There are climates where evaporative cooling is not effective, but perhaps they would be useful in the majority of climate regions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler