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[–] 57 points 3 years ago (10 children)

Yeah, the thing is the "unpowered" part. Look how much energy an AC chugs to achieve that cooling. This tower uses wind power to do it's thing.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    well technically it is powered, just directly by wind and water kinetic energy, probably(?) much more efficiently than if it had been converted to electricity first

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    Do we know it's more efficient? Has anyone done the math?

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  • [+] -7 points 3 years ago (5 children)
  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    No, I'm being genuine. It's theoretical and all, but if you were to put up a windmill in the same spot instead of a tower, it's possible traditional air conditioners would be able to cool the building to the same degree while also providing surplus electricity. It's also possible that you wouldn't, and I don't know the answer. It would also be interesting to compare it in different ways as well, like rather than asking "If a windmill was here" we could ask "The energy removed from the wind by the tower", because that would indicate scalability problems if one windmill was indeed able to cool one building, but maybe 100 wouldn't be able to cool 100. All hypothetical, but air conditioners/heat pumps are actually very efficient, so it's possible an active design could be more efficient than a passive one in this situation. At least, until someone does the math

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Another thing to note, to your point, is that a windmill breaks down and requires energy to repair. These wind towers in Yazd are still there and doing the same thing from hundreds of years ago

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago

    AC really doesn't consume that much if designed and sized properly. It's nothing like the energy consumption of standard heating. The problem is all these people going out and buying the cheapest floor unit or undersized window unit they can find, then the wheezing thing just sits there chugging 100% of the time because it can't keep up with their space. That's super wasteful.

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