Home Power Setup Evolution - Page 4

 

I do not considering A?C as a frill.
Spending 95-100 degree days with 75 -90% humidity is not my idea of living.
Call me spoiled but at least me and my house don't smell like a wet dog.

 

In some parts of the country, like New England, air conditioning might be
useful for one or two weeks per year. Some might say that it falls into the
"frill" category in these areas, because it is relatively easy to live
comfortably without it. You can usually get by for those months of "bad
sledding" with a few simple house fans.

In the south, especially where it is humid like Florida, air conditioning
would be more of  a requirement for comfortable living. So, it's not an
"attitude" problem,  but rather a feature of geographical location.

Air conditioning is a hard nut to crack for alternative power setups, mainly
because it requires large amounts of electric power  that can be expensive
to generate yourself. It is usually impractical to use alternative power to
generate enough power for other high consumption electric appliances like
electric space heating, or even electric stoves and hot water heaters.

While there are a variety of fuels available for heating, electricity is the
primary source for air conditioning. Therefore, air conditioning and
alternative electric power generation setups and air conditioning are not
that compatible, especially when compared to cheaper and higher capacity
grid power.

It's not a simple  "attitude" problem that holds back alternative power when
it comes to things like air conditioning, but physics,  geography,
engineering and economics.

 



On 2005-06-17 nobody@home.net said:
   >Newsgroups: alt.energy.homepower
[snip]
   >Air conditioning is a hard nut to crack for alternative power
   >setups, mainly because it requires large amounts of electric power
   >that can be expensive to generate yourself. It is usually
   >impractical to use alternative power to generate enough power for
   >other high consumption electric appliances like electric space
   >heating, or even electric stoves and hot water heaters.
   >While there are a variety of fuels available for heating,
   >electricity is the primary source for air conditioning. Therefore,
   >air conditioning and alternative electric power generation setups
   >and air conditioning are not that compatible, especially when
   >compared to cheaper and higher capacity grid power.
In the late '90's a guy in Indiana with a massive PV system running
A/C gear used to post here.  Think his sig was "Biker Babe in Black
Leather" (given him by a lady-friend).

I once fired up the RV airconditioning, watched my system's battery
charge deplete at a truly alarming rate, shut it off.  And I run 1KW
of PV, have 13 KWHr of storage.


Tom Willmon
near Mountainair, (mid) New Mexico, USA

Net-Tamer V 1.12.0 - Registered

 

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 18:12:06 +0000 (UTC), twillmon@cybermesa.net
wrote:


We run AC most days in summer. But it doesn't have much in common with
its grid-connected cousin, which might often include a leaky house,
monster air source unit, 20 hours of central blower time, and
sweater-requiring indoor temps.  ;-)  Instead we have (3) 700W
ground-source console heat pumps. Typical day might be 2 hours run
time of the office unit early afternoon, 1 hour on the living room
unit late afternoon, and 1 hour on the bedroom unit just before
bedtime. AC can fit pretty well with some solar systems given that if
one has enough generating capacity for short winter days, then there
ought to be a substantial surplus on the long hot summer days. Battery
size shouldn't play much of a role in the use of AC, since it tends to
be needed when the sun's blazing. One thing we've done that helps make
AC practical here is to have both sun and wind generating sources.
They compliment each other nicely, and either can power the house by
itself when conditions are right. So when both are online, as on our
typical sunny and breezy summer afternoon when the batteries are long
since full, there's a surplus of energy that's best put to good use.

Wayne

 


Hello, I'd like to hear more about these ground-source "console heat
pumps".  Any info you're willing to share would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Herb