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I work on making a specific piece of HVAC equipment/industrial cooling equipment more energy efficient by creating a new control algorithm. Overall, HVAC system

by elil17 7y ago

I work on making a specific piece of HVAC equipment/industrial cooling equipment more energy efficient by creating a new control algorithm. Overall, HVAC systems represent about 4% of US power consumption and their share is rising, but most are controlled in highly inefficient ways. My guess (genuinely just a guess from the limited slice of HVAC data I’ve seen) is that you could improve the efficiency of these systems by 25% without changing any of the hardware. I think we need more people working on small, boring fixes to reduce the amount of resources we use as a society.

ryanmercer 7y ago
> HVAC systems represent about 4% of US power consumption and their share is rising, And here is a real issue. We use a lot of electricity for air conditioning. Temperatures are rising which means more air conditioning. More air conditioning means more power, which means more fossil fuels. More fossil fuels means more warming. sigh. We could save a fortune just by being smarter about new construction, but alas, cookie-cutter home builders and apartment companies just want the cheapest thing they can sell/rent. My bedroom closet at my apartment isn't even insulated, in the winter it gets as low as about 40F and Tuesday with it 92F outside my closet was 86F so opening it twice a day dumps a bunch of heat/cold into my room. The on-suite bathroom on the same wall is somewhat insulated but not as much as the other rooms, they skimped on 2-3 widths of insulation to save 20-30$ per corner of each building because, you know, they don't pay the electric bill.
- elil17 7y ago
  >Temperatures are rising which means more air conditioning. More air conditioning means more power, which means more fossil fuels. There’s three opportunities to disrupt the problem. Reduce AC use. Reduce how much power AC uses. Reduce how much fossil fuel power generation uses.
elil17 7y ago
Also, the reason I even have my job is that there are increasingly stringent energy efficiency regulations and they need to be met. I couldn’t be doing the work that I’m doing with out the people who protested, took direct action, and lobbied their local governments to change building codes.

by elil17 7y ago

ryanmercer 7y ago

> HVAC systems represent about 4% of US power consumption and their share is rising, And here is a real issue. We use a lot of electricity for air conditioning. Temperatures are rising which means more air conditioning. More air conditioning means more power, which means more fossil fuels. More fossil fuels means more warming. sigh. We could save a fortune just by being smarter about new construction, but alas, cookie-cutter home builders and apartment companies just want the cheapest thing they can sell/rent. My bedroom closet at my apartment isn't even insulated, in the winter it gets as low as about 40F and Tuesday with it 92F outside my closet was 86F so opening it twice a day dumps a bunch of heat/cold into my room. The on-suite bathroom on the same wall is somewhat insulated but not as much as the other rooms, they skimped on 2-3 widths of insulation to save 20-30$ per corner of each building because, you know, they don't pay the electric bill.

elil17 7y ago
>Temperatures are rising which means more air conditioning. More air conditioning means more power, which means more fossil fuels. There’s three opportunities to disrupt the problem. Reduce AC use. Reduce how much power AC uses. Reduce how much fossil fuel power generation uses.

elil17 7y ago

Also, the reason I even have my job is that there are increasingly stringent energy efficiency regulations and they need to be met. I couldn’t be doing the work that I’m doing with out the people who protested, took direct action, and lobbied their local governments to change building codes.