Researchers develop air conditioning that's 90 percent more efficient, bone chilling
By Laura June 
posted June 20th 2010 11:25AM
posted June 20th 2010 11:25AM
posted June 20th 2010 11:25AM
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Good. AC (buying, replacing, and running) is the main expense (other than taxes) for my apt buildings.
Get this outta the lab soon please :)
@CodyTech
Yea, because these will be free, set up for you, and will run on magical pixie dust that they are more than happy to share with you and your tenants.
/facepalm
You'll be dead before these become more affordable that traditional AC systems.
@CodyTech Just turn it off and tell them to man up and sweat it out.
@A25i
Well that seemed snarky and uncalled for
@A25i Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?
Did I say it would be free, cheap, and setup for me? It could cost a lot more and still be worth it. I have an AC unit that costs over $2k to run a month in the summer. If a new system were truly 90% more efficient or even 50%, it wouldn't take long for it to pay off it's increase in price.
@CodyTech
i dont know why nobody's pointed this out yet, but CFCs and HCFSs don't contribute to global warming. global warming is the greenhouse effect created from water vapor and some gaseous carbon compounds such as CO2 and methane.
with CFCs, the chlorine/flourine in the compound stays intact until the ozone layer of the atmosphere, where it reacts with the ozone molecules and oxygen atoms in order to take them out of the ozone cycle. hence destroying our ozone layer, this lets ultraviolet light in that causes skin cancer, etc... but its not global warming.
HCFCs are a little better since they're not supposed to make it so high in the atmosphere before breaking apart, but they still do to some extent.
also, i do not believe CFCs are taken into consideration when calculating carbon footprint.
@CodyTech - I made one of these 20 years ago. It was a pizza.
@mynk I'm not making any comments about global warming. I'm making a comment about electricity costing money and if I can replace a big energy user with one that uses less, that's good for me.
And global warming or not, using less energy is a good thing (regardless of the cost savings). Can't we all agree that reducing how much oil/coal gets burnt up in a good thing?
@mynk
I'm glad I wasn't the only one to notice engadget's clear lack of basic climate science. Lol @ poor research there big e
You guys mind sending this tech down to Houston, Texas, we're dying down here!
@CodyTech "Researchers develop air conditioning that's 90 percent more efficient, bone chilling" Marketing develops a way to charge an arm and a leg for it, don't expect this to come without a massive upfront investment, at least in the beginning of product rollouts. 10-15 year re-coup costs, on the higher end if patents are involved, which they undoubtedly will be.
Actually all my apartments are in Houston (montrose area)
@mynk Actually CFCs do contribute to global warming just not very much. They are a much more potent than CO2 in terms of their potential as greenhouse gas, but fortunately we emit far far less CFCs than CO2.
@CodyTech
While I agree that this is a much needed step forward, there are a lot of things people can do to make their existing units more efficient:
In crease Insulation to 12 inches.
Surround outside units with bushes or other plants (this will cool the unit by a few degrees, making it easier for the unit to cool the air).
Read what mynk said
Good job mynk
@mynk Good clarification. When talking about CFCs and HCFCs, are we talking about Freon and Puron? Or something else? For some reason, I thought they banned the bad stuff a while back. Nevertheless, I just want to add that air conditioning is a marvel of modern technology. There was a fascinating special on PBS Nova about the history, and how for a long time, people used to just blow air over blocks of ice. We've come a long way.
@CodyTech
How many units per building do you typically have? Also what's ratio of revenue per month vs debt service? I am looking to buy buildings in New England but any half way decent ratio are all in really bad to awful areas.
@mynk
Global Warming and the Ozone Hole are both scams...
Global Warming isn't really happening....and the ozone hole is always changing in size. The small amounts that get up to the ozone layer won't ever do enough damage for us to worry about.
@reiththestud He's right though
@mynk
Right, except for the CFC part. The last C stands for carbon.
@CodyTech Im a HVAC Tech. Last 13 yrs and we already have some very efficiant systems to choose from. You don't have to wait. But if your not a home owner then your not going to buy a new AC. Ppl don't value their comfort much. I see ppl with all that money can buy. The finest of everything accept their AC is junk and the want cheep repair. Screw you ppl haha cause I'm going to stick it to you. But not to worry. I under charge the little old ladies.
@XChrisX : I know! I just recently came back from Vancouver, and really don't miss the high heat and muggy nights. I can stand and tolerate the heat, but would rather it be spring time all the time.
@Quikboy
Vancouver?? High heat and muggy nights?? Are you fucking kidding me? I lived on the west coast of Canada all my life, but now live near Hong Kong. Try the humidity of southern Asia before you EVER complain about Vancouver's humidity LOL
@Toy Yoda send me an e-mail. cody 2000 at gmail. I can go into all of that with you. Your basic premise is correct and what you'd assume: The better the area, the worse the return. It follows the same risk:reward ratio as 'good area' = low risk (and vice versa) for the most part.
@CodyTech
No need to wait for this to come out of the lab. There is a perfectly good and capable system available for commercial use that has a fast return on investment and can also utilize renewable energy. This is DuCool. Visit their website at www.ducool.com and contact LIGPA at www.LIGPA.com for your US installations.
Can you imagine how much the national carbon footprint would decrease if AC tool 90% less electricity than now? Wow.
@DTJ Allowing us to live normally while helping the environment? That is a plan.
@DTJ
Just imagine your lady friends ;)
@DTJ
90% more efficient != 90% less energy
If it were 100% more efficient it would use half the energy. 90% more efficient means it is using about 53% of the power.
Try not to use shampoo maths. :P
@Tristan Read the source next time,
"The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory has invented a new air conditioning process with the potential of using 50 percent to 90 percent less energy than today's *top-of-the-line* units. " (emphasis mine)
So, 90%, which is in-line with your 53% is the baseline, it actually gets upto 90% power savings (funny, that's what the OP posted that you tried to upstage).
Now, obviously it's reduces more than 90% of the power input on bottom-of-the-line or older less efficient tech. So, really, even your 50% is way off from the average consumer and business units.
@Tristan That's still HUGE. Big enough that if the claims are true this ought to be one of those things the government gets involved in pushing (IE tax incentives for upgrading your current AC maybe as part of deal making sure the original inventors/investors license the technology at reasonable prices).
@juanvaldez
Nothing to do with upstaging, just trying to correct.
Anyway, I was going off how engadget wrote the article, 2 mistakes in one article is pretty impressive. I didn't think I would need to check the source to see if engadget was correct. My statement holds for the information I had.
Cheers.
@tad604
Dont get me wrong, I think the tech would be amazing, I'm just trying to correct a mathematical mis-comprehension (even though my source was unfortunately inaccurate)
Any power saving with these devices would be amazing, in Australia we get blackouts during the summer because of the AC.
@Tristan When you originally made the comment I understood your line of thought, but felt like it didn't make sense. I felt like 90% more efficient could mean to get rid of 90% of the waste or to nearly double the efficiency, it's just not as intuitive to you.
@Tristan BTW, "shampoo math" definitely comes off as upstaging. And, you did have the information, the OP posted it. It's just that you saw a discrepancy between two pieces of information and chose the one that you originally had in your head, which coincidentally, provided you an opportunity to look witty and intelligent.
Again, I saw two ways to look at the original article, instantly I wanted to hope that they wrote it wrong as in an absolute sense 90% efficiency might be quite good (I have no clue how efficient an AC currently is), but came to look at the comments to see what interesting alternatives might already be out there on the horizon (something Engadget doesn't always know). In all honestly, I didn't even see the 3rd way which was decrease the actual way. I thought either they'd remove 90% of the waste or make it close to 100% more efficient (though I found that to actually be unlikely because it's just a weird phrasing..."almost twice as efficient" makes more sense their for intuition and marketing, PS Engadget headlines in a sense are marketing because they are trying to "sell" you articles, even if you don't have to pay anything out of pocket). However, I didn't really see the 3rd possibility of they using 90% less power until I read the OP and then wanted to see who was right.
I'm not sure when you were clued into these 2 incorrect statements, but if the other one was before your post then maybe it'd have been even more in your interest to check the facts because it's not like Engadget is a tech blog, not a scientific journal. It seems like from your comment on the first thread that you had some issues with the article to start, perhaps you should've ignored it completely and relied on the people who have a better understanding of the tech.
@DTJ I don't think this article is entirely accurate. Sure, it's 90% more efficient than refrigerated systems, but it's an evaporative system, so it should be compared to one. Most importantly, can it be used in places where existing evaporative systems can't, like humid places?
And how many of us will be able to afford replacing current units. Maybe the government will make it free? That's why I voted Obama.
@camerafan And that's why I hate democrats...
@camerafan - Nothing is free dumbass, thats our tax dollars being thrown around like candy at a parade.
@murc Who you calling dumbass, , numbnuts!
@camerafan
lol@ all the comments.
I don't think it will be "free", just pray it won't cost an arm and a leg. If they are smart.. they'll price it competitively or even slightly cheaper than current units.
@engadgetcomexcludeengadget
...And that is why I hate Republicans.
@B3nt
and thats why i love politics, because you guys seem to think it matters which party your for...
@engadgetcomexcludeengadget He's just trolling. But hating someone because he/she is a democrat? thats a whole lot of people to hate, good luck with that.
@camerafan Yea like it makes a difference. It's the same policies just presented in a different way. That's why I say all these parties suck. The only way to go is to be truly independent without the party leaders giving you an agenda and talking points. Republicans and democrats all suck.
@reiththestud haven't you noticed all the hatred since a socialist was voted in??
Bingo!!!!
Hooray for Technology!
Really?!
Engadget still believes in Global Warming...
@murc
Congrats on opening Pandoras box