Bill Gates venture backs effort to bring aircon startup to market

A fund founded by Bill Gates is leading a $20 million investment round into an aircon startup which promises to slash the carbon impact of keeping people cool on a heating planet. The cash is designed to get to market aircon units from Blue Frontier, which bases its approach on removing moisture from the air and doing the most …

[bombastic bob]

Lest we forget...

The theory of 'Man Made Climate Change' caused by CO2 is a MYTH, since CO2 is so *horrible* at being a greenhouse gas. GH gasses are supposed to stop black body radiation from leaving the planet+atmosphere at night (which is how the planet cools), thereby keeping the earth warmer. But CO2 only affects a TINY fraction of the IR energy. MOST of that energy is kept on the planet by WATER ("the other greenhouse gas"). Additionally CO2 is at equilibrium between rain, plants, and the temperature of large bodies of water. Hockey stick graphs that have tracked CO2 since 1958 and TRIED to claim the CO2 is causing the warming NOT ONLY fail to take into consideration that warmer water (from temp cycles and active volcanoes) RELEASES CO2, but MOST of the numbers since 1958 were apparently tracked at MAUNA LOA, an ACTIVE VOLCANO in Hawaii (and YES, volcanoes gas TREMENDOUS amounts of CO2, even from soil [for miles around them], with MOST of the world's carbon existing in the MANTLE, where LAVA comes from).

Still, energy/cost efficient air conditioning IS a good idea. If I owned the place I live in, I'd try to set up smart fans and dampers in the attic, trap heat when cold, ventilate when hot, use prevailing wind with rooftop spinners, things like that. I mean we ALL want to save MONEY, right? So WHY CAN'T "THEY" JUST SAY "LESS EXPENSIVE" INSTEAD???

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm either scientifically illiterate or evil, you decide

If the science is too difficult for you, maybe just don't go announcing it to everyone. You're embarrassing yourself and honestly it's making a bunch of us feel a bit awkward just being in the same community. There's nothing wrong with being a simpleton, but announcing it to the world by yelling in all caps about things that are evidently far beyond your grasp is right at the top of the cringe scale.

In fairness, you may still be getting paid to post stuff like this- it's possible that you're evil rather than stupid - but I don't know if there's the ROI on it even for BP or Exxon to justify maintaining that astroturf by this point. These claims are almost as fossilised as the fuels they are selling us to help extinguish our grandchildren.

[bombastic bob]

Re: I'm either scientifically illiterate or evil, you decide

eh, I do my posting for free. It's a public service!!! [gotta get the word out]

By the way - the science of CO2 should be obvious to someone who took college chemistry. Or high school chemistry. Just study what an equilbrium reaction is. if you have EVER done a phosphate titration, you'll understand this, too. If you have NOT done anything like that, well, that explains a lot...

I made this graphic I have been posting a lot online, explaining in detail what I mentioned in my original post in this thread. It has charts and explains things more. You would have no trouble finding it if you are interested. It has science in it. Have fun refuting it. ( You can see it in #ClimateChangeHoax )

[Charlie Clark]

Re: I'm either scientifically illiterate or evil, you decide

Some of us have done more than high school chemistry and understand why your purported science isn't.

CO2 as a greenhouse gas is a theory that fits the facts quite well. Whether it's the only one, or if the causes are not all man made is beside the point if we can see that higher water temperatures correlate increasingly well with extreme weather events.

Whether it's as part of an attempt to reverse the increase of atmsopheric CO2, or simply to reduce our dependency on energy sources we don't control, I don't see what's wrong with trying to reduce our energy use and switching to renewables.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm either scientifically illiterate or evil, you decide

Agree with the OP or not it seems odd that a moderator deleted the post. It wasn't offensive, it's not something I would have said.... but instead of correcting them it's been deleted... as if we need to live in fear of views we don't agree with.

What's happening to El Reg? It doesn't seem to have room for views other than its own, it seems dominated by Americanisms, even when discussing UK news.... it just seems to be loosing its edge :-!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm either scientifically illiterate or evil, you decide

> it just seems to be loosing its edge :-!

Lost it about 10–15 years ago when the old guard retired / passed away / went to pastures new.

[bombastic bob]

Re: I'm either scientifically illiterate or evil, you decide

as if we need to live in fear of views we don't agree with.

[The Man Who Fell To Earth]

Re: Lest we forget...

The "hockey stick graph" is universal at all CO2 monitoring stations all over the world.

Thinking you are the first to think of a possible problem with data collection in a field you have no expertise in is the definition of hubris. To then fail to consider that there's a reason the Mauna Loa is fit for purpose and use your ignorance to invalidate (in your mind) and entire planet's data collection is psychotic, not just scientifically illiterate.

[david 12]

Re: Lest we forget...

"The hockey stick graph" was an error in the late 1990's. The mistake didn't disprove science from the 1960's, or science from the 2020's, but it did enormous damage to the 'climate change' cause.

[Tom 7]

Re: Lest we forget...

Intriguingly if you look at the graph of the ten hottest days recorded in the UK (as of last weeks toasting) it is a hockey stick! An ice hockey stick mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Lest we forget...

It's a complete myth - hoax even - that volcanoes emit huge quantities of CO2 and that they have any significant part to play in climate change.

The fact that this is easily researched and the quantities of CO2 emitted in an eruption easily established just shows what a complete load of cobblers you are talking - to the extent that any sane person has to question absolutely anything else you have to say on the subject. An eruption of a volcano adds a tiny fraction of 1% of human's CO2 output to the total.

Seriously, go and do a little research and then come back and quote your sources to justify your claim. Or maybe even question why you are such a diehard climate denier clinging to such provably false facts.

[jmch]

Smoothing of use rather than cost??

The more appliances such as these aircons, electric cars, domestic heat pumps etc can adapt to consume 'cheap' electricity, the smoother the consumption curve will be, until you will basically have a flat demand, and no 'cheap rate' electricity - at least not in the sense we now know it where night-time electricity is cheaper because of reduced demand. Instead what will probably happen is that the cost of electricity will depend almost totally on available supply rather than demand. This in turn means that when intermittent sources (wind / solar) are plentiful, prices will be low, which in a subsidy-less world would mean that wind/solar become less economically feasible to operate.

That in turn means that pricing will be being updated 'on the fly' (and appliances will be following suit). With mass adoption, that could lead to situations where the 'clever' appliances are all dumbly switching on at the same time as electricity gets cheap, electricity demand spikes as do prices, and said dumb smart appliances switch off again. Rinse and repeat. Only half joking there... there needs to be a bit more additional smarts into these 'smart' appliances. To our advantage, it will be decades before these appliances become commonplace enough to trigger grid problems.

And the great long-term benefit (assuming no stupid smart behaviour as above) is the smoothing of demand, which would reduce stress on the grid infrastructure.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Smoothing of use rather than cost??

Yes - the higher cost of electricity is usually due to varying demand.

Nuclear power has to maintain relatively constant power levels due to the physics.

Steam plants burning fossil fuels can more readily adjust to demand, but it is more economical to run them at relatively high power levels all of the time, and it takes quite a bit of time to shut them down and start them back up again.

Gas turbine and Diesel "peaker" plants are designed to quickly handle varying demand but since they only run some of the time (and often at lower efficiency, as I understand) the electricity they produce is MORE EXPENSIVE.

And when the wind does not blow, or there is overcast (or night), "green" power isn't going to help much.

The only practical thing left for varying demand is hydro-electric, and there are only so many dams.

So CONSTANT DEMAND (especially using offpeak power) IS a great idea, if you can offset usage from peak times that way. In my case the utility is charging differently for different time slots, so I run dishwashers and laundry and (sometimes) A/C during off-peak whenever I can. Not always possible, but I try. It saves money. If this were AUTOMATIC somehow, it would save money and ALSO even out demand somewhat.

Makes total sense.

[adam 40]

Re: SmOoThINg oF uSe RaThEr ThAn C0$$$t??

Apart from Hydro, maybe we could harness some other type of potential energy?

I was thinking, 7 billion humans times the weight of their middle finger, hovering 2 inches above the shift key???

Anyhow, joking aside, the storage of this renewable stuff to smooth out the peaks is an issue.

Or else - only use it when you have it? So - no smelting or factories running except when the sun is shining or wind blowing? Maybe good old market pricing of electricity will sort that one out though.

Lastly, with this salty idea for air conditioning - what happens if it turns out cool the next day? Your investment in electricity is wasted. And - why do we need anything better than freezing and melting water? it seems like an invention for invention's sake.

[werdsmith]

Its 5 o clock somewhere.

The sun is always shining somewhere. The wind is always blowing, somewhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Its 5 o clock somewhere.

The Germans will always be able to buy cheap gas off someone. Oh, wait...

[ThatOne]

Re: SmOoThINg oF uSe RaThEr ThAn C0$$$t??

> Lastly, with this salty idea for air conditioning - what happens if it turns out cool the next day?

Well, the next hot day will come, eventually. And as far as I understand, the activated salt solution can wait indefinitely, till next summer if necessary. Your investment in electricity isn't wasted, payback is just delayed since you would have paid today for tomorrow's cooling.

What's revolutionary in this system is specifically the possibility to store potential cooling, meaning you can fabricate that cooling whenever convenient, and use it whenever you actually need it.

[JT_3K]

Re: SmOoThINg oF uSe RaThEr ThAn C0$$$t??

I like the historical approach. Surplus of power? Pump an ungodly amount of water from a low lying location to a relatively high location. Dearth of power? Run back to the original location through a turbine. Better still I'm not thrashing various resources in (relatively) "short term" storage solutions, such as lithium.

[jmch]

Re: SmOoThINg oF uSe RaThEr ThAn C0$$$t??

The problem with pumped storage is volume, both the metaphorical volume of electrical power and the physical volume of water needed. It's only practical in places where you can easily find height differences between plateaus (so must be a mountainous area that is still relatively accessible), and the area of (usually ecologically sensitive) land that would need to be flooded with water for the pumped storage is huge. Also, most of the low-hanging fruit for hydroelectric have long been dammed up and put to use (although quite possibly some hydroelectric-only plants could be rejigged to work as pumped storage with minimal conversion if they have space available for a 'low' reservoir).

[JamesTGrant]

Re: Smoothing of use rather than cost??

Oh no Bob, I’m disappointed! It’s easy to take a running nuclear power station and have it contribute zero to the grid. It’s using the nuclear bit for heat (for pressure) to turn a turbine. That pressure need not be used, nor the turbine engaged, nor the output of the turbine connected to anything.

[Richard 12]

Re: Smoothing of use rather than cost??

Not true.

The energy from the core has to go somewhere.

If you're making steam, then you have to condense that steam or you'll run out of water and/or superheat the steam. Either way you will seriously damage the equipment after a while.

If you're using the steam to spin the turbine, all the energy not being fed into the grid-connected loads is speeding up the turbines, heating up the turbine, the bearings and the generator set. So if you disconnected the load they would overspeed and be seriously damaged.

So no, it's not easy.

It's not easy for coal plants either, for much the same reason, which is why nuclear are a great replacement for coal.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Smoothing of use rather than cost??

"The more appliances such as these aircons, electric cars, domestic heat pumps etc can adapt to consume 'cheap' electricity, the smoother the consumption curve will be, until you will basically have a flat demand, and no 'cheap rate' electricity - at least not in the sense we now know it where night-time electricity is cheaper because of reduced demand. Instead what will probably happen is that the cost of electricity will depend almost totally on available supply rather than demand"

It's the other way round. Some uses are elective and some aren't. By reducing the price when non-elective use is lowest steers the elective demand to those times. It's the variable pricing that would smooth the demand, not the smoothed demand that would kill the variable pricing.

[NeilPost]

Re: Smoothing of use rather than cost??

Whilst visiting friends in Houston, the surreal nature of their incessant complaining about the costs of A/C and being overly punchy about shutting outside doors to keep the cool in …. whilst the ‘free sun’ was beating down outside not being captured by any Solar (that could be powering the A/C) was not lost on me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Smoothing of use rather than cost??

> That in turn means that pricing will be being updated 'on the fly'

Pricing *is* updated on the fly. Not consumer prices (yet), mind, but the prices companies pay each other in the energy market.

[elsergiovolador]

aircon

Bill Gates and air CON sounds like a plan to deprive people of air... After all Bill Gates supports depopulation.

[Oglethorpe]

Re: aircon

Is there anything wrong with lowering the population through passive means? For example, lowering birth rates. It's probably the surest way to fight global warming.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: aircon

It's called Eugenics and certain Austrian painter has been thinking of that a lot too...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: aircon

Eugenics was based on pseudoscience pushed by the American medical community:

Trickle Down Episode 1: Bad Seed (Part 1) In the early 20th century a psychologist named Henry Herbert Goddard aimed to prove that “feeblemindedness” was a hereditary trait.

[IGotOut]

Re: aircon

Eugenics was also endorsed by many of the early 20th century great scientists, business leaders and politicians.

Bell, Roosevelt, Keller, Churchill, Kellog and many more.

Being smart doesn't stop you being an assholes.

[david 12]

Re: aircon

It wasn't just the smart and great who supported eugenics. It was the popular science of the time.

And, although it is now modified by a common scientific understanding of 'regression towards the mean' and 'race', it is obvious that the fundamental idea of eugenics is making a slow comeback, as people who were directly affected by the idea in the 1940's, and their grandchildren, become less influential in society.

[that one in the corner]

Re: common scientific understanding of ... 'race'

being that 'race' has no scientific basis at all, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: common scientific understanding of ... 'race'

Yeah, I find it extremely bizarre that supposedly developed societies actually take that term seriously.

I don't know if it's still a thing back in Britain but for a while they had those forms that went with your job application where you were supposed to state your "race" and a bunch of other none of your business bullshit.

On the "race" box I used to write "human, what else?"

[fxkeh]

Re: aircon

We know the best (and really the only effective) way of lowering birth rates is to increase the wealth of the population.

Increased wealth pretty much straight away leads to better spending on maternal and infant healthcare, which means lower maternal and infant mortality and less babies need to be born (families don't over-procreate to cover some of their children dying before adulthood). And richer populations mean more middle class service workers, which means a reversal in the cost-benefit of having more children (when you're a poor subsistence farmer, more children means more help in the family business so you have more; now more children means more cost in providing for them and their education).

So by helping the poor be not poor you reduce birth rates so fight climate change. It's a win win.

[NeilPost]

Re: aircon

Relative to one of Trump’s ‘African Shitholes’ deprived area’s of Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, Hilly-Billy America, London, Middlesborough, Glasgow etc have many orders of magnitude better wealth and a lower population, but it’s hard to see the Unicorn upland of better health outcomes.

Universal healthcare (free at the point of provision), universal education, fairly paid and regulated work, access to affordable housing, food, low carbon energy, water (inc treatment of waste), in rgaal refuse and recycling, are all on the mix … without trashing the planet even more.

Yes there is a direct correlation between large families and paediatric/adolescent mortality… but it’s far more nuanced that ‘just make everyone richer’.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: aircon

> For example, lowering birth rates

It was one of the first ideas that emerged in the prehistory of environmentalism, back in the 1960s. One Mr Paul Ehrlich published his views in a 1968 book titled "The population bomb".

Of course, his idea was to control population growth in the *developing* world, so that the privileged amongst us could continue to live our lives of excess.

After a while this evolved into what we now call "sustainable development". "Sustainable" as in, let us continue to pollute but produce more for the same amount of pollution, and it would be a good idea to delocalise that production to poor countries so that the pollution happens there, btw. The 1987 Brundlandt report has the details.

[Dave 126]

Re: aircon

> a plan to deprive people of air... After all Bill Gates supports depopulation.

Bill Gates and many others actually support a high human population *over the millennia to come*. Population boom and busts have been observed in ecology, and analogous phenomena have been seen in many other complex systems.

[HereIAmJH]

Absorption cooling

Maybe Bill could invest in technology to reduce the maintenance on absorption chillers and make them a better fit for residential use. Imagine, a tech that uses heat to make cold. Let the energy come from that big bright light in the sky. And if you still need cooling at night, you can either use a small heatpump backup or use natural gas to supply the heat. And it's been around long enough most of the patents should have expired.

Personally, when I'm shopping for an expensive item that I want to last for 10-20 years, I prefer simple tech.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Absorption cooling

Or Solar... no moving parts...

Good luck to them, it's clearly a problem, the more ways its looked at the merrier. I suspect a simple change like "super black paint" or some sort of similar massive surface area coating on the cooler fins would be an easy gain though.

After market even.

[martinusher]

Nice idea, but....

Solar panels on the roof serve two purposes. One is to generate electricity which, coincidentally, peaks around the same time that people need to run air conditioning. The other is that its a sort of sunshade, it reduces the energy available to be absorbed by the roof.

The only reason why A/C is needed at peak times is that the majority of buildings, both domestic and commercial, in countries like the US are built poorly with insufficient insulation. You also need mass to help with heat management. Design clues from Morrish architecture should be a guide.

[DS999]

Re: Nice idea, but....

The need for air conditioning actually peaks several hours after the peak of solar energy generation, which happens around solar noon if you have south facing panels. Many houses are not running their AC (or are running it much less) during the day when the people are away, and it will start up around 5pm to have the house at the desired temperature by the time they return.

So having it "store up" cooling that will be needed a few hours later would be a good thing. But since not every house has solar panels, or this fancy new AC, it would be preferable for houses with solar to deploy their electricity onto the grid during the day and have the AC regenerate in the middle of the night when grid load and energy prices are at their lowest.

In places that have a lot of wind power (Iowa generates nearly 40% of its electricity from wind) a "smart" AC could regenerate when the grid signals that there's a surplus of wind power. It might do that on a day that's cloudy, windy and cool, and use that stored cooling the next day when it is sunny and hot with little wind.

Theoretically if you had enough storage you could build up your summer cooling storage on sunny days in the fall, winter and spring, though without knowing more about the system I don't know practical that amount of storage might be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nice idea, but....

My solar panels face north ;-)

[DS999]

Re: Nice idea, but....

The existence of Australia is an Illuminati conspiracy like "the Earth is round". No place with that many deadly animals and insects running around free exists outside of fiction!

[werdsmith]

Re: Nice idea, but....

Are you suggesting Skippy isn’t real?

[JT_3K]

Re: Nice idea, but....

Well birds aren't. How much more of a stretch is it to Skippy?

[Cederic]

Re: Nice idea, but....

Can confirm. Landed in some place I was told was Australia but after several hours driving through a large zoo called The Outback I saw only their kangaroos, wallabies and goats*. Left again entirely alive, unpoisoned by spiders or snakes, and not eaten by crocodiles or the mythical koala.

I even saw what was described as 'the sea' and survived the alleged jellyfish, sharks and colourful octopuses.

The only place I've seen wild crocodile is Panama. Which came as a surprise..

*and lizards and a gorgeous four foot lace monitor and emus and various other avian life forms and some weird beings that called themselves Australians.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nice idea, but....

I was going to comment along similar lines. In the UK we rarely need AC - it's heating in winter that's our need. Consequently, solar panels generate many times the household need in summer, but not enough in winter. I recently installed a 4kW set on my house, along with a 5kWh battery. In summer, we draw almost nothing from the grid (the battery was sized to meet our typical overnight and morning use). A good day we can be exporting >20kWh back to the grid; we don't get paid for that as the supplier won't provide the right meter - out existing supply meter currently runs backwards (which I told them about just after the solar system was installed).

I don't know how much the system will generate in winter - my expectation is that, if the existing meter remains, we'll probably end up with around a zero net draw. The "interesting" part will be how our supplier responds when they get their next reading...

Our central heating is also electric, but on a separate circuit and meter (and lower tariff). We use more electricity on that circuit but, as noted above, solar on that wouldn't be much use. A wind turbine and a bigger storage system, perhaps‽

[Paul Crawford]

Re: Nice idea, but....

I don't know how much the system will generate in winter

It depends a lot on where you are in the UK, not just typical weather but also the obvious summer/winter effects of the Earth's inclination the depends a lot on your latitude. There are some web sites that give that sort of information, but I'm not too sure about the units of the graph. for example:

https://weatherspark.com/y/38094/Average-Weather-in-Errol-United-Kingdom-Year-Round#Sections-SolarEnergy

[NeilPost]

Re: Nice idea, but....

Didyou size your battery for an EV or PHEV as that should be on your shopping list?

All very expensive however, and not practical for many. Even at current kit and energy prices, Solar remains a rich man’s game. For everyone else it’s a risky 10 year loan, barely scraping break-even after 15 years.

[ThatOne]

Re: Nice idea, but....

> the majority of buildings, both domestic and commercial, in countries like the US are built poorly with insufficient insulation.

Building houses perfectly adapted to the local climate and environment is very easy, but more expensive, which makes it a big no-no: Houses are built to be as cheap as possible while looking expensive. No thought is wasted on quality or habitability, low cost and high profit is what is important.

[NeilPost]

Re: Nice idea, but....

Or acres of sealed glass with paired acres of largely useless blinds which when down require the lights on),), glass topped central atriums in open plan buildings, ineffectual HVAC/smart climate control where it’s both too hot and too cold within a few feet of a vent.

Many buildings would be fine with just some natural airflow going through.

[Anonymous Coward]

Architecture

> Design clues from Morrish architecture should be a guide.

Or from the traditional architecture of hot climates, even ancient Mesopotamia.

Think cooling towers, whitewashing, thick transpirable walls and other passive systems.

[Gene Cash]

"removing moisture from the air"

Will that work here in Florida? We don't measure the amount of moisture in the air... we measure the amount of air in the moisture.

Things like "swamp coolers" don't work, for that reason. There's no evaporative cooling because there's no more carrying capacity when you're already at 95% humidity.

We use heat pumps here, which is basically reversible air conditioning. It cools you in the summer, and pulls heat out of the outside to heat you in the winter.

> countries like the US are built poorly with insufficient insulation

"Cracker style" housing in Florida has a big hallway aligned with the wind direction and large windows keep a constant breeze through the house. It's how people survived here before electric fans and A/C

Of course, modern people don't want such an ancient and efficient design! At least with insulation, you can just install some.

[DS999]

Re: "removing moisture from the air"

Given that it uses a desiccant rather than evaporation into the air I don't see why not. Higher humidity would perhaps make it work even better.

I would really like this because the biggest discomfort for me is on days when the temperature is fine but the humidity is high. If you run the AC to dehumidify then it is cold, if you turn off the AC to stop being cold then it is clammy. If you can reduce the humidity without cooling the air that's a big win. Its easy with today's AC systems when it is both hot and humid, because you want both the cooling and the dehumidification.

[Richard 12]

Re: "removing moisture from the air"

Reducing humidity is one method of cooling the air, as it causes suspended water droplets to evaporate, thus taking up latent heat.

It also makes sweating more effective, of course, which is why mammals like it.

[NeilPost]

Re: "removing moisture from the air"

I guess you could use the water output from the system for many things receiving general water demand ?

[YetAnotherXyzzy]

Re: "removing moisture from the air"

What you want is a dehumidifier. When I lived in Lima (moderate temperature but high humidity) I had a dehumidifier in every room. Bonus (as another commenter mentioned) was that the recovered water could be used for toilet flushing, watering the plants, etc.

[gecho]

Copper

Since the refrigerant stays in the unit there will be no need to run copper tubing to an indoor evaporator, which should help reduce cost, complexity and a failure point.

[Hurn]

This sounds similar to a Lithium-Bromide cooling system, where heat is used to make cool.

On my old sub, the source of heat was steam. It sounds like this system uses a heat pump as the heat source.

Principal is based on a closed loop, where water is absorbed by the nasty working fluid, in a partial vacuum, which generates cold, suitable for cooling a chill water loop.

The "wet" fluid is then heated up, which drives the moisture out, "drying" the fluid, which is then ready to re-absorb the water and chill down, again.

Presumably, all of these nasty bits are outside of the structure being cooled, with a chill water loop running into it. Inside the structure, all that's needed is the chill water loop, and strategicaly placed heat exchangers (think CRACs) and probably forced airflow blowing past.

[Richard 12]

(Almost) all modern commercial buildings use a cold water loop around the building, with local heat exchangers placed around.

Mostly because cleaning air ducts is really difficult, and not cleaning them causes serious health issues.

Ducting hot/cold air around seems to be a peculiarly "US home" solution, actually. It took me years to figure out what was going on in some of those films.

[Tom 7]

Theres a sand container being heated up in summer to store heat for the winter for a small estate.

Which looks very promising - heats to 300C and loses a degree in 6 months. Great for heating water/air from PV/cheap electricity. Have another one and run it the other way - ie cool it down in winter to provide coos in summer. Basically a large thermal blob.

I tried similar in my polytunnel with got very hot in summer so I used a solar panel/battery to drive a pump which blew air from up top through a pile of rubble in large plastic tube down the middle of the tunnel and it reduced the temperature significantly and kept the tunnel warm at night when it would normally drop to near outside temp. Should be easy to implement similar for houses, though something with a phase change at around 25C could be made a lot smaller.

[Danny 2]

Joke not ahead

I came here to post a joke about the phrase "mildly flammable refrigerants", as I've survived three house fires and none of the flames were mild.

It was a dark joke admittedly, I would have went on about the US media articles questioning why Britons don't have air conditioning, but hell, it was a very short path to eugenics.

Some of you people are obviously too hot, as in hot headed. Don't come to Scotland please, we are overflowing with English now in our balmy 21°. Californians, go to Canada to cool off.

Me, I'm betting on thermoelectrics.

[Sirius Lee]

Maybe not patentable?

Which is a good thing. This exact idea was implemented in a prototype way by a guy with the science and engineering explained in this video on YouTube in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_g4nT4a28U&list=PLzrI14lOlSqeS5pNkRCiV1-yhoBlCmxms

[Tim99]

Solved problem (but not necessarily cheaply?)

I live were it is hot for much of the year, we have reverse cycle air conditioners which also heat the house in the Winter. Obviously it is hottest when the sun shines - In Western Australia 25% of our houses have solar panels. Some of our neighbours have 10kW systems, 6kW is perhaps the most common new system at about £3,000 installed. Mine is older and "only" has a panel capacity of 3.7kW with a 3KW inverter and cost £2,300 installed. It was a bit more expensive for its capacity because it is part of a local micro grid. On the hottest of days it generates 24kWh, we use 14 kWh, the spare 10kWh is sold to my neighbours. Our grid electric cost is £0.15 kWh, the micro grid pays us £0.07 kWh for the spare that we generate. My buy-back time on the solar is less than 4 years. On a bad humid day, we buy 6kWh from the grid, mostly when the sun has gone down. A battery would fix that, but they need to fall by in cost by about another 30% to give us a good return on the capital investment. The aircon cost was £4,900 installed. If it was installed when the house was built the cost would have been less. We have an easy standard permit procedure.

I’m retired, which means that we are often at home during the day when the sun is shining and get the maximum benefit, but many people who are at work during the day leave the aircon off and bang it on when they come home, causing a peak demand when the sun is low in the sky. If our houses were better insulated, the numbers would be even better.

Our systems are owned by the State (unlike the rest of Australia, where they are privatised, and their costs have gone up significantly). Our biggest user is industry, our coal power stations will be decommissioned by 2030, and no new gas power stations will be commissioned after 2030 (we have large gas fields and 15% of capacity is reserved for local use). As climate continues to change, we expect that these targets will be modified. Renewables here are already significantly cheaper than coal and gas, but storage is still expensive.