14 DAY TRIAL // Air conditioning appliances work by cooling and often dehumidifying the indoor air, typically through refrigeration. Unfortunately, some of these appliances are huge energy consumers that also contribute to air pollution through emissions of fluorinated greenhouse gases.
A company is providing an alternative way of bringing the cool breeze into our rooms, one that promises to be much more energy efficient and less harmful for the environment. The solar powered air conditioning is a really logical concept, since you only need it when the sun is burning bright, so the appliance will take this excess brightness and use it both to power up and to provide us with a gentle breeze.
The fact that it uses solar power is also an important advantage for people in remote areas, where electricity is not readily available. Called Coolerado Coolers, it's a low energy air conditioning unit that delivers up to 5 tons of cooling while drawing only 1200 watts, a power load that can easily be handled by a solar installation.
Basically, it's an evaporative cooler that puts the cool moist air through an air-to-air heat exchanger, thus providing cool and dry air to the space it pumps air into, thus making it far more effective at keeping you cool.
One slight disadvantage is the fact that it needs dry air to operate efficiently, since its performances decrease rapidly with humidity, but this could be good news for the really dry areas on Earth, like the Southwestern US, Northern Africa and Australia, where much of the human development relies on air conditioning.
Comfort air conditioning makes deep plan buildings feasible. Without air conditioning applications, buildings must be built narrower or with light wells so that inner spaces receive sufficient outdoor air via natural ventilation. Air conditioning also allows buildings to be taller since wind speed increases significantly with altitude making natural ventilation impractical for very tall buildings.