I’d be interested to see what happens to your estimates if everyone who installed air conditioning had to provide sufficient PV panels to power it. There would be two effects – reduced demand for air conditioning AND reduced demand on public infrastructure. Also, only those who can afford it would need to pay.

In Australia, every $1000 air conditioning unit needs about $1000 spent on public electricity infrastructure to keep up with the peak demand.

Well lets see. Assuming that number is correct (which it may or may not be). A nominal sized window air conditioner of the recent variety and EnergyStar certified could be about one kilowatt. That’s enough to do a large room or most of a small apartment. My grandmother has two large ones which do the most of her bottom floor and she’d likely be in danger of heat stroke in the summer without them. I’m going to guess with the two big inwall AC units it’s gotta be three kilowatts when they’re both running. Central air can be a lot more for a medium sized home on a hot summer day.

So lets say that $1000 worth of air conditioner would be about 4 kilowatts of energy. Sound fair?

Okay so… I couldn’t find any 4KW systems for solar energy. At least none that were in a single package deal. I found this one for 18 grand which does 3kw: http://www.solarhome.org/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=358

So that’d be… almost enough. Possibly enough to run the air conditioners at medium. Assuming that it’s noon on the summer solstice and there is zero relative humidity. Um. Now, if you want to run them on high or run them on a hot evening or an oppressively humid rainy day then you’ll need at least four times as many systems plus the battery system.

(or you could do the grid dumping this, but since you asked in the context of saving money on the infrastructure that would not work. It would mean the grid would be even less stable and would be under extreme load when the sun is down and temperatures are still up).

So you’d need… lets see… a good hundred grand I would have to estimate. Hope you have a big roof!

Actually, I’d tend to think that the result of requiring people to have suffecient PV capacity to power air conditioners would be: Nobody would buy an air conditioner. Well, rich people probably still would. Everyone else, they would suffer in the heat. Now I wonder how much it would cost to pay for the removal of old folks, sick people and others bodies from their oppressively hot homes.

I think that most young and otherwise healthy people would probably survive. Possibly they would need treatment in a hospital for dehydration and heat exhaustion, but death would be pretty rare. Oh by the way, I hope the hospital has deep pockets and a big roof too, or they won’t be able to treat people very well during a heat wave.

Reference Karen, please,

In Australia, every $1000 air conditioning unit needs about $1000 spent on public electricity infrastructure to keep up with the peak demand.

        DV82XL said:

You know boss you don’t have to justify yourself to some random commenter who obviously ether hasn’t read the post and thread, or is incapable of understanding it.

The rest of us DO appreciate what you’re doing here.

Oh no, I just don’t want to take bull sitting down. Whatever. I really don’t care that much.

The rest of us DO appreciate what you’re doing here.

You can’t save the planet by feel-good offerings to some energy spirit – you have to invoke much more complex solutions.

        McGlashan said:

None of these articles address cap & trade for industry or individuals.

Actually they do. Lets say you cap carbon emissions. If that’s where most of your energy comes from than you have capped energy. Failure to provide an alternative means that any caps in carbon are effectively caps in energy. “cap and trade” is ridiculous without an alternative because it is simply energy rationing by proxy.

Guess who ends up buying the energy avaliable, either directly or by “trading” their “credits”

and speaking of credits how the hell do you enforce them for individuals? For big power plants or factories sure, you limit how much they can burn. But what happens if I decide to burn some dirty motor oil or burn some wood or coal or peat or burn old tires to keep warm?

is the carbon police force planning on putting an air sampler on every muffler and chimney in the world?

It’s a dumb idea and it directly and invariably creates shortages, rationing, price increases.