this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Mildly Interesting
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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.
The AC is also small compared to a literal building with a sewer underneath and doesn't require a windy day. Trade offs
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
Do we know it's more efficient? Has anyone done the math?
Are you joking?
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