Thread: solar-powered air-conditioning

I seem to remember about twenty years ago one of the mining developments in WA was using solar powered airconditioning, using absorption type heat pump plus heat (or cold) storage (probably cold water, but it was a long time ago) to distribute and store cold overnight.

John

I think solar assisted air conditioning is a more appropriate title. There is some more info on how it works here.

It still needs at least 150W to drive a pump. The thermal energy from the sun is use for compressing the refrigerant. As already mentioned, it would have to have the ability to run of the grid at night.

My fear with many energy saving ideas is that they become too complicated to be reliable. We'll see how many Prius' are still on the road in 20 years ...



Paul

Originally Posted by Disco_owner

Solar Powered Airconditioning would be great ,but I s'pose at night , Air-Con will still suck power off the Grids ?

That wouldn't matter because industry is the biggest user of electricity and peak usage is during the day.


Did anyone listen to the audio? My speakers are broked so I haven't. Anyone know how this works? I'm guessing some sort of heatpump?

awabbit posted the link hoadie

It's a hybrid system using an ejector or jet pump and says it's similar in performance to an absorbtion system, which I'm guessing means it's a fair bit slower to pull down than your standard vapour compression system (compressor style heat pump)

A major advantage from my POV is simplicity and $ cost to run.

The old Electrolux caravan fridge style absorbtion system doesn't use any moving parts and only needs a heat source, but they are bulky and become inneficient at higher ambients. (a fan on the heat exchanger would help a lot IMO)
They also suffer from the problem of seperation of the ammonia, water and bromine if left to sit idle for some time, needing it to be mixed again for the system to work.

Fan motors will need to be employed with this system for efficiency, both to move rejected heat away from the condenser and move air over the evaporator and into the space to be cooled, so the power requirements will increase

Originally Posted by Disco2tow

With the way my discovery is going I'll have to sell the kitty too
I can't live without a/c though if I had my way I'd live in a walk in freezer.

Sorry, didnt realse you had a D2........maybe we should have an appeal or something to help the D2 owners to afford to have Aircon fitted lol

one of the box ones in the window you can get cheap, they dont work all that well, they are noisey, they are not good for the env but will get you a little cooler than a fan

Just need to plug it is, no sparky required as long as you get a 10amp one.

Split systems are great and quiet but are pricey to fit.