Household Air Conditioners - How to Reduce Their Incidence and Use
Michael Robertson. Urban Ecology Australia. 2005.2
Increasing use of air conditioners in Australian cities is putting strain on local electricity transmission infrastructure and is adding to greenhouse gas emission from fossil-fuel powered electricity generators.
Why are households using air-conditioners more? How can we reverse this?
No-Air-Conditioner Capacity
1. Many houses cannot be kept within a tolerable temperature range (eg 15-30°C) due to flawed house design.
Recommendation: Ban new housing that requires airconditioners, ie to stay within a tolerable temperature range. Retrofit existing houses to increase their no-airconditioner capacity.
Thermal Tolerance
2. People's tolerance for interior temperatures has shrunk. With more money to spend on improving quality of life, and without sufficiently attractive alternatives, people seek to improve their quality of life by reducing the interior temperature range of their house (to eg 20-25°C) .
Recommendation: Develop an education campaign to encourage people to put up with a hotter indoor temperatures. Subsidise the purchase and installation of ceiling fans help residents cope with indoor temperatures approaching (or exceeding) 30°C.
Air Conditioner Energy Demand
3. Many air conditioners are not energy efficient. Reversecycle air-conditioners use far more electricity to provide the same cooling that evaporative air-conditioners could have provided in many situations.
Recommendation: Ban energy-inefficient air-conditioners. Hence ban reverse cycle air-conditioners for situations where an evaporative air conditioner would do just as well.
Number of Rooms Cooled
4. Many ducted air conditioning systems cool the whole house, even rooms not being used, or which could be cooled down just prior to use (eg bedrooms) instead of all day.
Recommendation: Ban air-conditioning systems that require or encourage residents to cool rooms unnecessarily.
Electricity Availability
5. Electricity is too readily available. Most households do not pay for extra use during peak use periods, such as on hot days (when lots of air conditioners come on), even though satisfying demand during such periods without blackouts would require expensive upgrades to additional infrastructure. If such upgrading is funded by increasing every household's electricity bill, then households electingto go without air-conditioners are penalised in favour of airconditioner using households.
Recommendation: Make electricity less available during times of peak demand. Install limiters on each household's electricity supply which prevent overall electricity demand in a given area exceeding infrastructure capacity during times of peak demand. Set limits for each household fairly to account for the number and (valid) needs of household members. Those wishing to exceed a fair limit should be allowed to do so only if they install extra-use meters that charge for electricity use exceeding a fair threshold, with the proceeds raised used to pay other households in the area to reduce their allowable limit (and to fund no-airconditioner capacity retrofitting and education, see above).
Electricity Supply Infrastructure - When to Improve
6. Note: The money raised by charging premium prices for electricity use above a fair threshold could be spent on increasing the capacity of local infrastructure to support increasing use of air-conditioners, but this would conflict with the need to reduce Australian greenhouse gas emissions (which are some 5 times the world per capita average).
Recommendation: No public money should be spent on upgrading infrastructure capacity to supply electricity to users to meet increasing peak demand, except in areas in which infrastructure is particular poor, and then only if infrastructure capacity is reduced in other areas so that overall capacity does not increase.
2007.10.6