19/5/2015 Three Heating, Cooling Solutions That Are Revolutionizing the Energy Industry

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The world has come a long way from traditional radiatorsand window air­conditioning units as the only ways toheat and cool businesses and homes. These old­fashioned methods are considered by many emergingscientists and engineers to be inefficient andunnecessarily costly.

The following three innovations to the heating/coolingindustries have inspired cost­effective and efficientmethods to regulate temperatures in vastly differentenvironments that can help improve environmental conditions as well as the everyday lives of the peoplewho use them.

Personal Cloud / Local WarmingProfessor Carlo Ratti, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's SENSEable City Lab, and histeam at MIT developed a new cooling technology referred to as the Personal Cloud orCloud Cast.

According to a press release, this system uses motion­tracking to provide people with a cloud of direct andlocalized cooling air.

"In the Cloud Cast installation, ultrasonic sensors embedded in the suspended canopy structure detectpassers by interpreting the echoes from high frequency sound waves," said Ratti.

According to Ratti, the device measures the time interval between a sent signal and the echo of receiving itagain, and uses that information to properly determine where a person is and how much space they aretaking up.

(Image/Carlo Ratti Associati)

"The effect is that of a responsive mist cloud activated by each passer­by," he said.

Three Heating, Cooling Solutions That AreRevolutionizing the Energy Industry

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19/5/2015 Three Heating, Cooling Solutions That Are Revolutionizing the Energy Industry

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One of the goals of this product is to increase efficiency by emitting cooling only when there are actuallypeople in the area to use it. That can allow businesses to save energy, which also saves money, by onlyusing the required amount of energy to keep people comfortable.

"In some cases, our calculations show you could reduce energy consumption by 90 percent," Ratti said.

Cloud Cast was designed to be implemented in hot, arid climates where the temperatures during thesummer months discourage people from going to places that do not have some sort of temperature control.

"The system would work less well in hot, humid climates, think for instance of tropical locations, as thehigher humidity in the air makes evaporative cooling less efficient," Ratti said.

Local Warming was released in July 2014 and according to a press release, uses WiFi­based motion trackersin order to project heat directly onto people who inhabit a building.

"The system generates a collimated infrared energy beam that follows user movement," Ratti said. "It's likea ray of warmth following you around."

(Image/Carlo Ratti Associati)

Ratti and his team believe that this technology has many applications, but one of the major goals is to be amore efficient and intelligent patio heater for outdoor businesses during cold, winter months.

The space around a customer would remain cooler, while each person gets an individually tailored blast ofwarm air. Therefore, this technology would allow for a large decrease in energy use.

"We are still working on the technology, adding new features, such as the possibility to customize yourindividual temperature," Ratti said. "It will be like a 'personal sun' following you."

Ice Bear"What the Ice Bear does for an air conditioner is we consume energy at night when the outside airtemperatures are much cooler and when the efficiency of the grid is much higher because everything isrunning at partial lows," according to Greg Miller, executive vice president of market development at IceEnergy.

The Ice Bear is an energy storage technology that pushes warm air from buildings through a capsulecontaining ice that cools down the air and emits it back into the building it is serving.

19/5/2015 Three Heating, Cooling Solutions That Are Revolutionizing the Energy Industry

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Usually, energy is less expensive to buy during the nighttime hours since there is less demand that drivesthe prices down. Therefore, using a system like the Ice Bear can not only increase efficiency, but can alsodecrease total spending costs that businesses have, according to Miller.

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Weather and climate play an important role in how efficiently this product works.

"The greater the differential between daytime and nighttime temperatures, the more efficiently we canprovide cooling," Miller said.

For example, the system would be much more effective in a desert environment that has a large differencebetween their daytime highs and nighttime lows as opposed to somewhere like Southern California that, attimes, does not exceed a 15­degree difference.

The product was initially developed for industrial buildings that have one or two stories, but last year IceEnergy started to create a prototype of a residential version of the technology that they hope to release in2016.

Emerson Heat Pump TechnologyEmerson Climate Technologies produces a long line of products designed to increase energy efficiency andconvenience in a wide variety of climates. Their heat pump technology is one way that they bring decreasedcosts and increased environmental benefits into the homes of their customers.

According to Karl Zellmer, sales vice president of air conditioning at Emerson Climate Technologies, heatpumps are essentially central air conditioners that can take advantage of off­peak seasonal electricity toheat an entire house comfortably using one central device, which is more efficient than using multipledevices.

The system actually "runs in reverse" in the winter in order to heat the home so energy costs are muchlower than other traditional methods of heating.

This technology is able to increase efficiency up to 20 percent compared to traditional heating methods,according to Emerson, especially in areas like China that have extremely high population densities. Heatpumps allow areas to reduce their reliance on coal­fired boilers, which can bring many benefits for the

19/5/2015 Three Heating, Cooling Solutions That Are Revolutionizing the Energy Industry

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environment.

"In general, if the power plants in your area burn coal or other fossil fuels to create electricity, then highefficiency appliances like heat pumps reduce the amount of fuel that needs to be burned to produce theelectricity at the power plants," Zellmer said.

(Image/Emerson.com)

Although heat pumps can be very energy efficient, they are not always a complete replacement fromalternative methods such as gas furnaces. Zellmer recommends that areas that constantly experiencetemperatures below 15 degrees Fahrenheit have a back­up auxiliary method in place in addition to the heatpump, which typically comes standard in today's systems.