4 ms·

There's plenty of evidence. One example is Passive House standards (which can be applied to commercial contexts as well), which reduce heating loads by 90% usin

There's plenty of evidence. One example is Passive House standards (which can be applied to commercial contexts as well), which reduce heating loads by 90% using the methods I discussed. There's a lot of factors you're not accounting for: 1. Waste heat from lights, equipment, and people is constantly offsetting the heating energy, and contributing to cooling energy. There's so much equipment in office/commercial buildings, it's common to need air conditioning all through winter. 2. It's not just air temperature difference, it's also about solar radiation gain. Even in cold climate zones the peak load for cooling is significantly higher then the peak load for heating.

kortilla 6y ago
Passive house standards don’t cut it. Reducing 90% doesn’t matter if many of those energy improvements also apply to cooling. > Waste heat from lights Use LEDs and this is irrelevant for a home. > people is constantly offsetting the heating energy Insignificant in the scheme of things. Humans can’t even keep themselves warm when holding still in 50F. > it's also about solar radiation gain. Do you realize how little sun cities in the north get during the winter? Conversely, solar electricity can conveniently capture plenty of electricity quite near the time it’s required in the South. Peak air con time is when there is solar radiation. Peak heating time is in the dead of night.