LG's solar hybrid AC unit probably won't do much to cool your power bill
By Tim Stevens 
posted June 21st 2010 10:38AM
posted June 21st 2010 10:38AM
posted June 21st 2010 10:38AM
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@FanBoyTheTroll yeah... well. I have a big screen to compensate for my lack of an argument on this one.
It'd probably more efficient to put an awning over your AC unit and shade it.
I'm fairly certain that this is a solar powered attic fan, that simply blows out hot air from the attic and sucks in cooler outside air, thus keeping your A/C's ductwork cooler, reducing the amount of energy your A/C system requires to run. When your metal ductwork is 150 degrees, it takes more to cool your house. If a fan in your attic is blowing out that hot, humid attic air, your ductwork cools to as much as 90 degrees.
@dougdeep Shading an A/C condenser has minimal benefit.
http://www.homeenergy.org/archive/hem.dis.anl.gov/eehem/95/950904.html
Also, this looks to be part of LG's Mini-Split heatpumps which operate more efficiently and with lower power than standard household units. I have a 12,000 BTU LG 'Art Cool' unit. When operating at full blast, it only consumes 600 watts. It's pretty nice.
With a properly insulated and air sealed house, you can keep cool with very little little electricity.
@James Sonne Fair enough, but what is the point of a small dedicated solar panel when ac power is so accessible?
I'd rather go all or nothing, and if investing in solar get a big panel across the roof tied in, not just to power a fan.
Definitely a step in the right direction, but as always, more work is needed.
And just to clarify, usually AC is not running when it is hottest... most people are at work during the day and which is when the solar cells will be sucking up sunlight. Figure 9 hours worth of sun is about 600 W of stored up juice per day.
Then when people come home from work around 5-6pm is when the AC usually get's turned on, so you could run it for about 20 minutes essentially free of charge.
And that is with just one of these panels. Cover your entire roof with solar cells and you could be off the grid for a good part of the day.
@Hazdaz You are correct about residential facilities, where perhaps these are designed to have the biggest impact. But, there's no doubt that during the summer highest energy usage period is from 11-2, and the surge is attributed to ACs working harder to compensate for the sun's exrta strength and anything else that is going on during the lunch hour...I believe this summer surge is the peak annually in hot regions, which is why in under-powered areas you are most likely to occur a brownout in the summer (brownouts may be a thing of the past by now, not sure on that part).
@Hazdaz And as long as we are limiting this to a household conversation, weekends and stay-at-home moms/dads haven't been taken into consideration.
@Hazdaz What? My A/C is on 24/7 10 - 11 months out of the year. During the summer, it rarely ever shuts off, even at night, it can run for months at a time without ever shutting off.
@juanvaldez
Usually the peak power usage time is not 11-2, but rather 5-7 or so when people get home. Just take a look at when most brown-out occur.
Also the key to all this is that this peak is only for a couple of hours... once the sun goes down, the house will stay cool, and after people have eaten dinner, power drops off fairly quickly.
And you are right, that people that don't work during the day, and weekends are not factored in, but the solution to most people's energy usage isn't a simple X watts used - Y watts generated either. Time of day, energy storage capacity and other factors play a bigger deal than the total amount of energy used.
@(Unverified) God, I hope you are trolling and messing with us.
@juanvaldez Why would I be trolling?
@Hazdaz It seems you are right on the peaks, I'm quite confused as to when I heard/how I came about that, must be close to 10 years but I can say with some confidence that I wouldn't attribute my error to the peak having changed over the years. Maybe I am only thinking of the hottest summer days or something, maybe just weekends on hot days. Not really sure, but just thought I'd say "My bad."
My three AC units (including central air) have been running 24/7 for the last month. We keep the one in the bedroom on all year.
To hell with my footprint... I have a carbon shoe store.
@(Unverified) Are you having a laugh? Is he having a laugh?
@A25i - Fighting global warming with 24/7 AC ON - Seems like a battle lost on the outset! (:
@Hazdaz - But then you need to invest more money/resources/manufacturing+transport_co2 to store the energy, which just seems like a dimishing goal!
@Marko
Nonsense.
You don't trash, and then buy a brand new panel every month or year. These last for decades. Some of the first panels that were mass-produced back in the 70s are still going strong today.
@A25i
So because a 'tard like you can't MOVE, you have no problems with rising ocean levels and catastrophic flooding, and every thing else that will happen.
Oh yea, and numbnuts, it's called CLIMATE CHANGE. Not global warning - not all parts of the globe will actually get warmer.
But then again, what am I saying... maybe your parent's basement won't get flooded when the sea levels rise.
@Hazdaz
hey douchtard... I said global warming cause fatty said that in his post I was replying to.
And no I don't have an issue with any of that shit cause ths planet is going to kill off itself long before climate or warming or whatever the fuck u hippie douches are calling it these days.
I want to move to your parents basement. Your mom would be so happy. She wouldn't have to make the trip up here all the time to get my nuts in her mouth. OH! and you'll appreciate this, she wont be burning all the fossil fuels driving to come up here to get her weekly filling.
LOL!!! This is hilarious
@Hazdaz
I set my AC around 84/85 when I leave for work then turn it down when I get home. If I turn it off the place gets a sweltering 95+ and takes forever to cool down which would ultimately use more energy than maintaining some level of temperature.
Of course, my place isn't very efficient because I have a bunch of giant old single pained windows but it's historic so I can't replace them.
@Hazdaz Ideally you'd be correct, but there are two problems. Many people are too lazy or too stupid to take advantage of the programming feature on their thermostat. (My job takes me into a lot of empty homes, and I see it a lot!)
Second, builders usually use the smallest AC unit they can get away with for a given home. This means many units are running constantly during the hottest part of the day because they can't keep up with the heat load instead of cycling on and off as needed. If you programmed the temp to be higher during the day it would get so hot inside that these weak units wouldn't catch up with the cooling demand until well after midnight.
@A25i
Awwww... looks like little A25i is all cranky.
That's what happens when 10 year olds are allowed to stay up past their 7:00pm bedtime.
Now run off you little scamp - the internet is no place for preteens because clearly they are too stupid to add anything useful to the conversation.
@Shooter McGavin
I can understand your issues, but there are almost always things you can do. If double pane windows are not allowed (which is quite surprising, even in historic districts because there are styles that have an "old" look but have modern efficiency), you can still add insulation. I do understand that sometimes you can only do so much, but then again, people that buy homes in historic districts should already know about these type of limitations. Heck, just having the shade from a tree out in the yard can sometimes cool a house rather dramatically.
@MBN
You can't make everything "idiot proof," but at some point people have to be educated about the programming features of these devices.
Concerning your builders comment - I see that crap all the time.
These builders - like all companies - do the absolute least they can get away with. And it's not just AC units either.
Look at stuff like water heaters, toilets, showers and insulation. They put in the cheapest stuff they can, and then a home owner isn't going to replace a brand new, but marginally efficient, unit. They are going to live with using X% more water each year, and Y% more electricity to heat and cool their homes. In the long run, this adds a TON to the nations energy usage.
All that crap should have a bare minimum level of efficiency. Like a builder should not be allowed to get a permit to build their McMansion if they aren't using an Energy Star appliance rate for that home (so they can't get away with using an efficiency, but under-powered AC to try to cool some ginormous house).
@Hazdaz My AC is almost always running. There's always someone home in my house, so it's always 74 through the day. When EVERYONE gets home from work, it turns down to 72, and then at night it drops to 68 and rises up to 74 at 10AM the next day. Usually during that rise is the only time the AC is off. It MIGHT cycle off during the night, but with these 80 degree nights, that's not happening much :/
@(Unverified) You need to get yourself a programmable thermostat ASAP. You're flushing tons of cash down the drain.
@Unverified User you are a terrible person
@Hazdaz Some people don't want to arrive home to an 85° house, regardless of the consequences to climate change. I keep the AC set at 70° 24/7.
@smallfrys
You are an idiot, not the least of which is because some $20 timer can turn your AC on a 1/2 hr or so before anyone even comes home from work, so they come home to a cool house. Hell, there are cellphone applications that let you control all that from anywhere right from your phone (I think running iPhone, Android and BB).
Running it for ~1/2 hr extra is a hell of a lot better than running it for 8+ hours needlessly.
I love the 'tards in this country that are actually "proud" of wasting resources needlessly... as if somehow that isn't impacting their own wallets. No one is saying anyone should *gosh* break a sweat in the middle of summer, but usually some very simply and cheap solutions can give people the comfort they want and actually save them money in the long run. Instead certain people out there are smug about their ignorance.
Still always happy to see ANY improvement.
@jrm125 Just buy 29 of these bad boys and you'd be set!
Just pay an extra $10,000 to save $1/month for the next 10,000 months... sounds like a great deal to me!
70 Watts per hour?? 1 Watt = 1 joule per second.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt#Confusion_of_watts.2C_watt-hours.2C_and_watts_per_hour
/journalism rant
"watts per hour" is not a unit of power. Grrrr! Practically every article on power generation makes this mistake, and it shows how little most people know about the subject. Please correct it.
@Timmmmmm I assume this is because regardless of what science says, we pay out bills in watts, we know the watts of our lights bulbs and we might know the watts of our CPU, so you should report on what makes sense to your clientèle .
@juanvaldez
actually you pay your bills in watts*h which is not the same as the watts on your lightbulb or your processor...
@Timmmmmm the article reads: 70 watts of power per hour, not 70 watts per hour of power, hence no mistakes in the article. Unless they just made a correction (;
@Marko well, the right way to say it is that it consumes/produces 70 watthours of electricity per hour or that is has the power of 70 watts.
@Marko neither of those sentences has a meaning
@Timmmmmm I realize it is not a unit of electricity, but sadly that's the only info that we were given -- that it can generate 70 watts in an hour. No info on amperage, etc.
Anyhow, regardless how you measure it, 70 watts total generated in an hour ain't much.
@Marko
They haven't changed it, and both of the things you said are wrong. It should be "It generates 70 watts of power." Full stop. 'Power' is already the *rate* of energy production. You don't need to add a 'per X' to turn it into a rate again.
@TimStevens
The information is incorrect. 70 watts per hour makes no more sense than driving at a speed of 70 mph per hour. Watts are already an energy 'speed', adding 'per hour' is completely wrong.
@Timmmmmm Well, I can make up some other figures if you'd like, but those are the only numbers I have to go on at this point.
@TimStevens I expect they just meant to say "70 watts". It looks about the size of a 70 W panel. Just remove "per hour".
@Timmmmmm
Well it makes sense if your accelerating! Maybe this unit just happens to produce and exponential amount of power. Did you think of that? Huh? No you didn't! Silly guy.
no offense Stevens, but Timmmmmm is right. i'm not blaming you since that's what the source said, but it's just "70 watts." to get the energy output over time, you multiply that by the length of time, so for an hour you would have 70 watts * 1 hour = 70 kWh (energy companies charge you by the kWh).
"70 watts per hour" would be equivalent to "70 joules per second per hour" which would mean an accelerating energy production. this would mean that after an hour of running, the solar panel would output 70 watts, and after four hours, the output would be 280 watts. after a week it would be 11760 watts, which doesn't make any sense.
@maveric101 whoops. take out the "k" in the first "kWh." this thing produces 70 Wh per hour, but your energy company does charge by the kWh.
@Timmmmmm Fair enough, "per hour" is gone.
@FanBoyTheTroll jokes on you. I've had it since day one with no screen issues. Same can't be said for you, with you're attachment issues you have with Apple and the iphail.