Run Your AC on Snow
by Mairi Beautyman, Berlin, Germany on 08.23.06
Browsing HowStuffWorks, we found some tips on how to put those winter snow storms to good use—and cool your house for free in the summer. We don’t know how practical this is…but an interesting concept. What do you need? A big insulated container with coiled tubes on the bottom, and a chilled water circuit running from the container to a radiator inside the air conditioner. Then, a pump to send the water around the chilled water loop. Oh yeah, and 409,500,000 grams of ice (902,000 pounds). (These figures apply to a 5-ton air conditioner, running for 12 hours a day, three months out of the year. ) The fine print here is that the big insulated container should be roughly the size of your house...Founded by North Carolina State University Professor Marshall Brain, this site has tons of other “explanations of how the world actually works.” Thanks tipster Mike. ::HowStuffWorks
Not very practical, but certainly a fun idea. Maybe what would be more practical would be a smaller container where less snow could be put, and instead of using it to A/C the whole house, it could be used to keep a fridge (and freezer) cool without electricity. Even that is probably not very practical for many reasons, but it seems like a more attainable goal.
Or how about a ginormous backyard ice cube tray that you fill up with water in winter, let freeze, and tip the contents into a superinsulated, below ground storge facility 1/10th the volume of the snow storage.
I can't see how this is much of a breakthrough. You can make your house cool if you just have enough ice to fill your house. I think I could've figured that one out on my own. ;)
I feel like the order of magnitude might be correct, but look at the last sentence: "The value of the equivalent electricity to cool the house, at 7.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, would be about $1,500"
Does it really cost most people $1500 to cool their houses in the summer? Particularly since this analysis was only for three months! $500/month? I don't think so. Then again, I didn't really turn on my A/C this summer, so maybe I'm just naive about how much this stuff costs...
They use 60,000 BTU as a baseline. Our A/C, arguably undersized, is less than 10% of that. It looks like I could get away with 7.5 ft. cubed with the following numbers: 5200 BTU, 12 hrs./day, 30 days, 50% efficiency.
Harvey d
Both practical and existing in a few places in mid and northern Sweden. In Sundsvall it is used for cooling of a hospital. Unfortunatly all available information is in Swedish.