• 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    we can’t.

    air conditioning does not work with hundred percent efficiency, so you will cool your apartment, removing x joules of heat from inside and create 1,1 x joules of heat outside. your apartment is now temporarily colder, but there is more heat in total than there was before.

    you will now be tempted to use the air conditioning even more, creating even more heat. welcome to hell.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      4 months ago

      Yep. That’s also not counting the heat generated from the electric transmission infrastructure between the power plant and your dwelling. Plus the extra emissions from dirty power plants to power all of the A/C.

      Hell indeed.

      • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Plus the extra emissions from dirty power plants to power all of the A/C

        i mean if we had AC that would work with 100% efficiency, then it would be the prime use case for solar panels. you only need AC when there is a lot of sunlight and vice versa.

        • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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          4 months ago

          Technically, all heat pumps have greater than 100% efficiency. It is how electric heat pump heating can compete with natural gas heating in terms of efficiency.

        • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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          4 months ago

          I don’t think we’ll ever make any machine that’s 100% efficient (electric resistance space heaters aside), but maximizing the efficiencies we can will at least mitigate most of the problems if they’re powered by clean energy.

          Not sure if ground source heat pumps (which would heat the ground rather than the air in the summer in AC mode) would make a meaningful difference or not.