Searching for Solar Powered Air Conditioning in Australia
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 11. 1.06
We have been saying for a while that what the world needs is a good solar powered air conditioner; (the pictured unit is an evaporative cooler and needs water) In Australia, the building advisory service of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects has been saying the same thing, and is complaining about the governments $ 30 million dollar investment in CO2 geosequestration when they should be looking at how to avoid making greenhouse gas, not how to bury it. "Energy authorities have been warning for years that the explosion of power-hungry airconditioners in Australia threatens the stability of the electrical grid during peak power demands during summer," [Architcentre Manager] Mr Hallett says. "When demand is at its highest, potential solar energy supply is also at its highest. This is a natural association and should be a key strategy." ::Herald Sun
In January, Mr Robert Caulfield, Managing Director of Archicentre said: "With increasing temperatures due to climate change we need to be implementing a solar powered air conditioning strategy nationally with the latest existing technology and new technology yet to be developed.
"Energy authorities have been warning for years that the explosion of power hungry air conditioners in Australia threatens the stability of the electrical grid during peak power demands in summer.
"When this demand is at its highest, potential solar energy supply is also at its highest level. This is a natural association.
"The Government has just announced a $30 million research project to bury carbon dioxide through geosequestration. This suggests that governments are committed to burning more coal rather than looking at creative new 21st century technologies."
Mr Caulfield said that this is confirmation that Australia is addicted to coal and it is like telling a smoker to cut back from 40 a day to 35 and use filter tips rather than suggesting they quit.
"Our energy and climate problems are a clear and present danger and one has to ask the question why all of the Government funded agencies supposed to be dealing with issues of the greenhouse have not been coming forward with a plan to develop solar powered air conditioners.
"Australia has a fantastic opportunity to develop and patent new non fossil fuel technologies that have world wide application.
"Australia's energy planning bureaucracies appear to be in the dark over the latest technologies or are unable to find Google on their computers." ::Archicentre
We don't agree about that- there is very little to find on Google about Solar Air Conditioners that makes any sense at all.
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What is with this diagram? It doesn't make sense as I can't see any possibility of this being solar powered,
Isn't this a diagram of a run of the mill fossil fuel powered split system heat pump? Not very green.
And the link for the coolmax goes to an ordinary evaporative cooler, a great 1920's technology, but not air conditioning and useless in high humidity.
The Pentagon link in the attached article doesn't even work. But a quick google search results in this article:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/femp/newsevents/fempfocus_article.cfm/news_id=8953
This article is actually really interesting and should have been the post rather than the austrialian article.
This Pentagon link explains a pretty amazing and very technologically advanced system, in operation currently and right here in the US. This is the interesting stuff, which Treehugger glossed over/didn't read/didn't inderstand/or just missed.
This article refers to a real, operating solar air conditioning system that cools (and heats) the Pentagon, not the pointless article that treehugger highlighted which doesn't say much and completely misses the point, which is basically is "if the American's can do solar air conditioning on the Pentagon, why can't the Austrailians?"
Why Treehugger published this pointless article and ignored the interesting article is beyond me. I makes me wonder if Treehugger even reads/understands any of the stuff they are parroting. Doesn't Treehugger click on their own links? Or use Google? This bad journalism is really turning me off to Treehugger.
Is this the typical treehugger pairing of a story that misses the point with an image that doesn't make sense?
LA: I admit the image has no connection to the story, It is from an earlier article on solar air conditioning and represents one version of one. As for the pentagon solution, we did not know about it and will review it for a subsequent post. Thank you for your imput!
More info appears here:
http://www.americansolar.com/techpapers.html