It is hot out, turn off your A/C. (Phoenix: apartment, credit)

[AlohaFriday]

It's not just students who do research. Professors do research, as well. And one of the researchers on this particular study happened to work at Stanford before joining ASU's sustainability school.

I dislike Phoenix and will knock it every chance I get but ASU's sustainability school is actually pretty good, especially when it comes to topics related to the urban heat island.

[hikernut]

Originally Posted by MotleyCrew

Keep ours 83 during the day and night. Never liked an ice box for a house. Hope solar technology ramps up during our lifetime to see it fuel an AC and the house.

Solar technology is already "ramped up", in my opinion. I won't bore everyone with the details, but at retail prices (buying a pallet of panels) a PV solar panel used in Phoenix will pay for itself in 4-5 years, assuming one can use all of the electricity produced, at a value of $0.15/kWh. The life of a panel is around 20 years, so there's a pretty ok return on investment if most of that electricity can be put to good use.

So what's the holdup? The world is trying to make solar work with the infrastructure we already have in place. This is an unfortunate reality, with respect to solar, because the cost of all the extra infrastructure to make PV solar "play nice" in our world is more than the cost of the panels themselves.

It's not realistic to expect the whole world to change just to adapt to PV. But maybe, just maybe, some folks who are willing to think outside the box could tackle one problem... air conditioning... to make a system that naturally works with PV solar. I think it's possible, and if nobody has solved this by the time I retire, I may take it on if I'm healthy.

Any no, this isn't just some pipe dream. I've thought about it quite a bit. Some of the pieces are available today. Other pieces I'm not sure of yet.

Regards,

hikernut

[AZDesertBrat]

Originally Posted by MotleyCrew

Keep ours 83 during the day and night. Never liked an ice box for a house. Hope solar technology ramps up during our lifetime to see it fuel an AC and the house.

I just have a swamp cooler but that thing gets as cold as AC. Even during the Monsoons is gets really cold. I try to keep my house around 80 and people laugh at me. Too hot. No, it isn't. And coming into an 80 degree house from over 100 outside feels pretty darn good. Granted we don't get quite as hot as Phoenix but 100 plus is hot no matter where you are.

I'm with you on the solar!

[vince3vince]

Originally Posted by Ponderosa

I am a little skeptical. Aside from the fact that it is ASU students who are known more for partying than scientific inquiry, the heat being blown out by an AC is the same heat that is being gained by a structure. Other than the motor friction/heat loss, there is no net gain in heat. An AC is simply a heat "pump". Had the sun shone on the ground all day the heat would also be radiated back into the atmosphere after sundown. Whether it would be more or less than that being pumped out of the structure would depend a lot on the soil cover. PV is a lot of rock. It absorbs a lot of heat during the day and releases it much more slowly than grass or even loose soil would. I think the ASU students need to have a few more beers and think this one through some more. There may be other explanations.

got me thinking about the carnot cycle

[kodokan]

Originally Posted by hikernut

Solar technology is already "ramped up", in my opinion. I won't bore everyone with the details, but at retail prices (buying a pallet of panels) a PV solar panel used in Phoenix will pay for itself in 4-5 years, assuming one can use all of the electricity produced, at a value of $0.15/kWh. The life of a panel is around 20 years, so there's a pretty ok return on investment if most of that electricity can be put to good use.

So what's the holdup? The world is trying to make solar work with the infrastructure we already have in place. This is an unfortunate reality, with respect to solar, because the cost of all the extra infrastructure to make PV solar "play nice" in our world is more than the cost of the panels themselves.

It's not realistic to expect the whole world to change just to adapt to PV. But maybe, just maybe, some folks who are willing to think outside the box could tackle one problem... air conditioning... to make a system that naturally works with PV solar. I think it's possible, and if nobody has solved this by the time I retire, I may take it on if I'm healthy.

Any no, this isn't just some pipe dream. I've thought about it quite a bit. Some of the pieces are available today. Other pieces I'm not sure of yet.

Regards,

hikernut

Hubby's just bought some solar panels to charge the battery on our camper; when explaining to me why he wanted to spend X hundreds of dollars on the panels, he wibbled something about some day being able to rig them up to run the A/C (wasn't actually listening that closely, but I think it involved putting the energy into batteries, then running the A/C from the batteries, maybe. There was talk of converters or transformers or some such).

He's a natural born tinkering engineer, so this is his sort of 'thing'. If he pulls it off, I'll let you know, although the solution is likely to be 'effective' rather than 'pretty'!

[Ponderosa]

Originally Posted by kodokan

Hubby's just bought some solar panels to charge the battery on our camper; when explaining to me why he wanted to spend X hundreds of dollars on the panels, he wibbled something about some day being able to rig them up to run the A/C (wasn't actually listening that closely, but I think it involved putting the energy into batteries, then running the A/C from the batteries, maybe. There was talk of converters or transformers or some such).

He's a natural born tinkering engineer, so this is his sort of 'thing'. If he pulls it off, I'll let you know, although the solution is likely to be 'effective' rather than 'pretty'!

He will never run the ac on them. LOL. There is not enough room on the roof of an RV for all the panels that would take. An inverter that would run the ac from the batteries would cost many hundreds more. On the other hand, I have solar panels that charge my RV batts and would not be without them. They will save a lot of money on premature battery replacement and they allow you to go out to places without hookups almost indefinitely (you need food and water of course). You will be able to run fans, led tvs etc, the furnace etc from the batteries and they charge up the next day.

[kodokan]

Originally Posted by Ponderosa

He will never run the ac on them. LOL. There is not enough room on the roof of an RV for all the panels that would take. An inverter that would run the ac from the batteries would cost many hundreds more. On the other hand, I have solar panels that charge my RV batts and would not be without them. They will save a lot of money on premature battery replacement and they allow you to go out to places without hookups almost indefinitely (you need food and water of course). You will be able to run fans, led tvs etc, the furnace etc from the batteries and they charge up the next day.

<scrunches face> I just asked hubby what he meant. And he spent the next half an hour explaining - that'll teach me. Lots of stuff about amps and watts and volts, and making analogies about water pipes, pressure and flow. Apparently our panels are 100 watts, and it'll fill our two batteries in a day/ about 15 hours of charging, and he's going to get an inverter (for no justifiable reason beyond 'want one to play with'), so we'll be able to run the microwave, the heated mattresses, and - very briefly! - the A/C, should the fancy take us. I think. If I understood it correctly.

It's exciting though, solar, and its off-grid possibilities. And much nicer than having a generator banging away in the background.

[Potential_Landlord]

Originally Posted by hikernut

Solar technology is already "ramped up", in my opinion. I won't bore everyone with the details, but at retail prices (buying a pallet of panels) a PV solar panel used in Phoenix will pay for itself in 4-5 years, assuming one can use all of the electricity produced, at a value of $0.15/kWh. The life of a panel is around 20 years, so there's a pretty ok return on investment if most of that electricity can be put to good use.

So what's the holdup? The world is trying to make solar work with the infrastructure we already have in place. This is an unfortunate reality, with respect to solar, because the cost of all the extra infrastructure to make PV solar "play nice" in our world is more than the cost of the panels themselves.

It's not realistic to expect the whole world to change just to adapt to PV. But maybe, just maybe, some folks who are willing to think outside the box could tackle one problem... air conditioning... to make a system that naturally works with PV solar. I think it's possible, and if nobody has solved this by the time I retire, I may take it on if I'm healthy.

Any no, this isn't just some pipe dream. I've thought about it quite a bit. Some of the pieces are available today. Other pieces I'm not sure of yet.

Regards,

hikernut

No doubt solar will work in Phoenix and Arizona and can generate a lot more of our power. I was always skeptical but the price for the equipment has fallen so drastically in recent years. Just imagine what will happen to the cost of power storage. That said there will always be a mix of power generation but we can make it reliable and cheap for generations to come.

[Potential_Landlord]

Everybody complains about global warming. Now we can complain about local warming

[Sovetsky Medved]

On April 1st my Thermostat goes on 73 degrees and it stays there till about October.
I don't have an A/C it's a chiller system and I don't pay utilities for that.
stayin cool in the home all summer.