Just chill...

I haven't seen much on the blogfront in terms of HVAC and refrigeration since the Freeaire craze of last year (now installed in Killington, VT, where they estimate they're now saving more than 86,389 kilowatt hours of electricity, while eliminating an estimated 58 tons of global-warming CO2 emissions annually!!!), so I thought I might see what's on the horizon...

My search brought me to Ice Energy's Ice Bear, an amazingly simple concept with an equally simple installation procedure (off-the-shelf easy).

Similar to Freeaire, the Ice Bear utilizes cool air conditions to reduce power consumption. Whereas the Freeaire system requires frigid conditions to operate at maximum efficiency, the Ice Bear condenses and freezes water at night when energy consumption is less costly. It then holds the frozen water in an insulated storage tank until daytime when the weather warms.

As the warmer daytime temperatures engage the air conditioning, the refrigerant is forced through the coils in the stored ice and chilled before being pushed in to the building's HVAC ducts, thus providing a cool stream of efficiently refrigerated air.

The Ice Bear® 50 system has a capacity of 50 Ton hours of cooling, including 45 latent + sensible and an additional 5 sensible only. The unit provides 7.5 Tons of cooling capacity for 6 hours of continuous cooling.

Typical configurations:

-7.5 Ton for 6 hours
-5 Ton for 8 hours or more
-Offloading of 10 Ton rooftop unit, where 10 Ton unit is oversized due to high rooftop temperatures
-Offloading one stage of a 10, 15, or 20 Ton, 2-stage rooftop unit

There is also a residential unit capable of eliminating up to 95% of on-peak air conditioning demand. And as an added bonus:

Assists LEED certification

-Adds 3 or more points to the Energy and Atmosphere credits

-Contributes to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) credits

-Brings Thermal Energy Storage (TES) enabling performance to refrigerant based air-conditioning projects

Now, since the Ice Bear claims to use an equal or lesser amount of energy --in addition to delivering a consistent capacity on 95+ degree days with no degradation in performance and no increase in power consumption-- I'm interested to see if this concept could be hacked to eliminate the majority of the power usage all together.

Consider a location like Kuwait that has an average January low of 45 degrees Fahrenheit and an average August high of 112 (the low for that month is a crisp 83 degrees)! With the exception of brown-outs caused by dust storms throughout June and July, I think it's safe to say that the area is drenched in sun.

So why not saturate the rooftop in solar, submerge the unit's storage containers underground to twice-insulate their exteriors from the harsh conditions,* and store the daytime energy in batteries for nightfall, using the saved energy to refreeze the cores at night?

*You're only depth-limited by accessibility...sink the parking 5-10 floors below the building and you could run the unit subterraneaously, making it even more efficient, but still accessible for repairs. Check some of the commercial case studies and decide for yourself. I think there are benefits that exceed the burden of peak consumption. I just don't have the book learnin' to prove it.

Huge pipes with big laser beams on their heads...

Off we go into the cold blue/warm red yonder...

I am a big proponent of grandiose scheming when it comes to green design, but I'm filled with trepidation when it comes to the screwing-with of Mother Nature's methods. She's existed this long for good reason, and throwing a stick into the spokes to get the bicycle to stop speeding down the environmental hill might not be the best method to slow down global warming.

BldgBlog has yet another interesting post, this one concentrating on James Lovelock's grandiose scheme to line the ocean with a bazillion vertical pipes in order to pump nutrient-rich seawater from the depths of the seafloor to the surface. He posits that the pipes would spur algaeic (my word) growth, thus spurring the "natural" consumption of carbon dioxide.



The concept of deep water exploitation is not a new one. Since 2004, the city of Toronto has been utilizing a 5 km long pipe to draw cold water from the depths of Lake Ontario and distribute it to office towers for air conditioning, Cornell University employs a similar program from Lake Cayuga, Stockholm uses deep sea waters for air conditioning, and Honolulu is debating doing the same.

Additionally, many geothermal pockets in the earth are being tapped in the US to heat and cool buildings. Las Vegas, in their infinite hotness, is desperately scurrying under their gambling tables for a viable source of cool earth.

Similarly, China has gone batty over geothermal exploration:

Last year alone, China added 102 gigawatts to its electrical grid--roughly twice the total capacity of California's--and about 90% of that came from carbon-belching coal plants... The China Energy Research Society expects 110 gigawatt hours (GWh) to be produced through geothermal power nationally by 2010, out of 2.7 million GWh in total.

Take Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid in Bejing, a community of buildings that employs 45 bajillion (my estimation...I think it's actually around 600) geothermal wells beneath its span.


While the majority of this award-winning design rests on firmly-grounded pillars, one must wonder what effect it has on the supporting ground mass to, in essence, dispose of half of that ground's strength by drilling well after well, side-by-side.


You must admit, those green roofs make you drool a little bit.

Given the building's weight, their must be some reduction in foundation integrity. Keep in mind, of course, that I have ZERO education and/or knowledge in architecture and engineering. I just like to ask questions :)

To get a firm understanding on the "hybrid" aspect of this project and its innovations linking building to building, watch this video (they start talking about the building about 3:00 into it):



While the reduced energy usage resulted from this practice is being lauded as the next big elucidation in eco-friendly heating and cooling, one must ask if we're not, in fact, warming the earth in areas we have never warmed before? Fortunately, most proposed installations are now carrying out environmental impact studies prior to their installation, but as we all know with green design/ideas/hypotheses, the trend usually precedes the technology.

My question is this:

If you're pulling cold air from the earth or sea, what takes its place? Are we not warming one area and compromising another?

Not to mention, you might cause an earthquake or two.