The New Air Conditioners: Salt & Sweat to Fix the Climate | Daniel Betts | TEDxMiami

[@samringwaldt484]

Great work Daniel! It is awesome to see more people being educated about the need to evolve our air-conditioning systems.

[@ericacarr-betts9465]

Wonderful presentation.

[@deniserobinson7188]

Great presentation Daniel. Very effective.

[@JeroenVanBemmel]

The sad part is that utility companies won't like this, as it reduces the need for their services and drives down the price of power. Inefficient air conditioning is their goose with the golden eggs. Your solution includes an innovative financing model for industry, aligning tenant incentives with landlord incentives. To address the consumer market, there will need to be a system and similar balancing act that benefits utilities too

[@bluefrontierac]

Blue Frontier, which is commercializing this technology, has many utilities as partners. Why? While we reduce the electricity consumption, we also reduce and shift the peak power consumption of air conditioning so that it matches renewable energy generation. This, in fact, has enormous value to utilities. You see, air conditioning electricity consumption tends to occur during periods when renewable energy is not generating at maximum capacity. This means that in order to power air conditioners, utilities must turn on peaking plants or invest in battery systems. Both of these are expensive. Also, utilities produce the lowest cost electricity with renewables (highest profit margin). So, although Blue Frontier reduces the electricity consumption, the shifting of the peak load and making it coincide with renewable energy generation reduces utility infrastructure investments and increases the profit margin on electricity sold. Oh, and all this while decarbonizing. Win, Win, Win! New business models using financial structures expand this benefit to ratepayers and to building owners.

[@ecosang88]

it requires lots of heat though. but overall, the maintenance and training for hvac guys are the issue. instead low gwp may be the key?

[@bluefrontierac]

The system is electricity driven. This electricity drives a small heat pump that increases the temperature of the liquid desiccant, which evaporates the water from it. This occurs at relatively low temperatures. Also, the evaporator of the heat pump recovers the heat used to increase the liquid desiccant temperature, thus the process is super efficient. We agree that low GWP (Global Warming Potential) refrigerants is key. The technology described in the video allows for this, while decreasing electricity consumption. In particular, note that the air conditioning process only requires concentrated liquid desiccant and water to run. No refrigerant at all! The refrigerant is only used to reconcentrate the liquid desiccant. This means that the refrigerant never comes into contact with air entering the building or the building interior, which expands the amount of low or zero GWP refrigerants that could be used with this system in a safe manner.