Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps • Hacker News Board

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#221

Post by sbov » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:48 PM UTC

QuarterReptile wrote: post #94

jriot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin doesn't nearly get as hot as the United States. Try sitting inside a house in Mobile, AL in July without air conditioner and see how long you last. Using your water example, what about the deserts in the US that don't have a nearby water source to cool everything. Europe is much cooler in comparison to the US.

I agree with most of what you've said, but I'd also argue that having large groups living out in the desert is such an absurd configuration for humans that it presupposes an indifference for any sort of sustainability.

The unique problem of desert cities seems to be inappropriate landscaping. Even San Francisco ships its water in from over 100 miles away - not having enough water locally is just a problem of cities in general. The AC story is much worse in a desert city, but the heating story is much worse in cities in cold climates. There's also the benefit that I tend to need my AC when the sun is high in the sky, which aligns perfectly with solar. I live in SoCal and almost never use any heating, even in winter.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#222

Post by uses » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:52 PM UTC

It's funny how almost without fail on HN, I can go to the comments, and the #1-5 comments is someone who quickly dismisses the main premise of the linked article. It's ridiculous how common this is. I've been reading HN over a decade and I don't remember if it was always like this?

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#223

Post by Nelson69 » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:53 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #93

rplst8 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge for these is the cost. First, you either have to drill wells that are ~500 feet deep or lay coils of tubing under your yard (if you have one) below the frost line. Doing either is expensive, though the wells are much more so. The downside of the cheaper option (the coils under yard) is that earth shifts, and the coils will too. I've had two separate friends install these (usually 4-6 separate coils) onl…

Sure, it's cost, but that's solvable. 1. Drilling the wells is not actually that expensive depending where you are. For me, 3 300 ft wells, bored, piped, and grouted, was about 5k. 2. The units can be gotten for that price with install. You need to take into account the fact that they are significantly more efficient at both heating, and cooling, and hot water, over their lifetime. (also, their specs and submittal da…

May I ask where you live to get the drilling done in that price range? Just curious. At $10k it's insanely compelling.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#224

Post by jdmichal » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:54 PM UTC

rplst8 wrote: post #117

amatwl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is why air conditioning is important: it's estimated nearly 70,000 died in Europe during the 2003 heat wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

To be fair, if you die from a heat wave - you probably weren't going to last that much longer anyway.

As someone who has lived in Florida for 30+ years and worked two summers at theme parks: Heat exhaustion is very easy to ignore until it becomes heat stroke, at which point you typically need help to seek treatment. Especially if you are not well versed in the symptoms.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#225

Post by epistasis » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:55 PM UTC

Scramblejams wrote: post #207

zkms wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you run your refrigerant loop through the ground instead of cooling it using the hot ambient air In the same vein, rejecting heat to the cooler night air is a lot more efficient than using hot day air. You can operate a chiller at night and generate a bunch of ice efficiently. During the day, you can melt the ice for cooling at day -- without operating any sort of compressor. Once the melted water gets higher th…

Interesting, are there any writeups you could point me to on how to size a system like this for the average home and what the energy costs are like?

A Southern California utility is testing out Ice Energy's units, but the focus is more on demand response/energy storage than on efficiency:

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/ice-energy-will-provide-1-mw...

Though the NYTimes article points out that the improvement from AC efficiency is mostly related to peak demand shaving as well, so it serves a similar purpose.

Their commercial page is here:

https://www.ice-energy.com/residential/

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#226

Post by jdmichal » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #147

ramses0 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.ugra.org/pdfs/SurfaceWaterTemp.pdf Random Texas river temperature ranges from 55º (winter) to 85º (summer). The world is a big place with lots of climate variety. :-)

Just FYI, the symbol you're using is an "ordinal indicator" (it has a tiny line below it), e.g. 1º means "first" according to Wikipedia (I copied the symbol and put it in duckduckgo). TIL. For me, on Linux with US-international keyboard (with dead keys), the degrees symbol is on AltGr+Shift+0 (and then either a letter, like å, or space to just make the degrees symbol).

My font shows zero line. I can see a slight difference in shape, but only if I put the two symbols right next to each other.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#227

Post by bcatanzaro » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

The planet would be better off if people moved out of the cold North and instead used more air conditioning. That's because heating is incredibly carbon intensive. Think about the temperature gradients in New York in the winter time. Going from 20 or 30 degrees F to 70 degrees is more carbon intensive than going from 90 degrees to 70 degrees, and the number of days it's cold in the winter is often greater than the number of days it's hot in the summer. The overall carbon burden of heating is greater than that of cooling.

This means that the carbon angst directed at AC is primarily a puritanical impulse. It's a new thing! It feels nice! So it must be a sin!

However, refrigerants are bad for climate because they have huge greenhouse gas potential multipliers.

So the solution isn't really to improve air conditioner efficiency, it's rather to find refrigerants with less warming potential.

And move everyone out of New York and Boston - their climate conditioning is very carbon intensive.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#228

Post by esrauch » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

Berobero wrote: post #178

hughw wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing the number of humans could be one approach. The idea causes rancorous response from religious people who believe God told us to be fruitful and multiply. To reduce births might require coercion, it's true, but it would not require killing people or making them suffer. I don't see how else we can continue to enjoy the benefits and power of technology while keeping the planet habitable and enjoyable.

You realize the world's birth rate has already been on the decline for decades, correct? And in general, the bulk of this occurred not because of coercion, but because of economic development and the ensuing shifts in optimum family strategy.

When you say "birth rate is falling" its effectively the second derivative on "number of people" right? As in, if we have go from 2 children born per person to 1.5 children born per person, we are still growing the number of people.

Even if "children per person" falls slow enough you could even indefinitely increase the rate that new people are added right?

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#229

Post by afinlayson » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

Air conditioners are really inefficient, and people run them in excess. And because there's no carbon tax, the cost of them is too cheap to curb usage. Sure it won't solve the whole problem, but solving this issue would be very valuable to the planet.

Re: Improving air conditioner efficiency could reduce worldwide temps

#230

Post by undersuit » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

rplst8 wrote: post #120

axelfontaine wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The vast majority of the heat is removed from the water by a processing plant before it gets reinjected into the stream. The temperature difference is negligible.

Which requires another Carnot cycle.

Yes and it can be very big and very efficient and replacing it for a more efficient one doesn't require convincing every citizen to replace their unit. Also, less plastic would be used.