Solar Powered Air Conditioners
The summer heat is arriving in the northern parts of the world and bringing those hot sticky days that can make us so uncomfortable. The ideal solution on everybody’s mind is a cool dip in the ocean next to some tropical beach. Unfortunately that is not possible for practically all of us and we have to take the second option, The Air Conditioner.
The Air conditioner does bring lots of needed relief but the big down side is that they are energy hungry. As the sun gets higher in the sky more conditioners around the world spring to life cooling our surroundings. This places a large strain on the electrical grid and occasionally can bring the network down just when you need it most. The brighter side here is that hot sticky sunny weather is ideal for solar energy production. It seems like a perfect match.
Solar energy stations can help with the demand and many cities and town add energy to the network with installations on rooftops of homes and businesses. This may take care of the increased demand but there is still the reliability of the grid to consider and we can only pump so much power through those lines before they can’t take any more and fail. The other down side is that you still have to pay for your power supply.
The ideal solution here is a home based solar powered air conditioner. Mostly solar energy has easily applied itself to devices that use just a little power like personal music players and lighting. Those air conditioners take demand to another level and are not ideally suited in their current form.
Reducing your need for cooling is one of the first steps to take. Normally we thing of insulation for keeping the warmth inside, but this can equally apply to keeping the warmth outside and the cool refreshing air inside. Some small and cheap ideas could easily done. Roof ventilation, those attics and roof spaces are heat traps. Gaps, doors and windows opened just a little bit can let massive amounts of cool air escape. Your outside walls could be warming up to much and radiating heat inside your home. Adding some shade could be as easy as planting a few bushes to act as sun blocks.
Ultimately you will still need some form of cooling and as an alternate to refrigeration air conditioning the use of evaporative coolers may be an option. These use the evaporation of water to cool the air and can use much less electricity at around 25% of refrigeration air conditioners. This lower electrical usage makes them more suitable to be powered by solar energy produced in the home. There are a few downsides, they do use water and this in itself is a precious and soon to be costly and in demand resources. As these are based on water evaporation the performance will be reduced in areas of high humidity. If you are lucky to live in the desert then they are ideal but then you will already probably have a water problem.
Reducing power usage and costs using renewable and alternate energies tend to lend themselves to multiple tailored solutions and can not really be just taken out of the box and used. You home and location will have a big say in what will work for you but the solutions are there. Solar powered air conditioning can be done but it might be a little bit more tricky to implement. Anything that could reduce your energy consumption should be investigated if it works the savings could be quite large.
Related posts: