CH CH CH CHANGES ....

..... you know the song.

I listened to a discussion on the global impact of air conditioners (RNZ Morning Report) today:

RNZ 

It was interesting as I've wondered about the effect of the 'explosion' of use of air conditioners or heat pumps in New Zealand.

This is a relatively new thing and something that I've never until very recently had experience of. We not long ago installed 3 heat pumps into our house (bedroom and both lounges) but have never had them in previous houses. Fortunately the RNZ report was not as scathing of their use as I thought might be the case:

However, according to Sustainable Engineering director Jason Quinn, it was hard to say whether a reliance on air conditioning was harmful.

Any unit that cools in summer also operates as a heat pump in winter, he said.

Those units tend to be more energy efficient than older electric heating options, meaning less net emissions over the course of a year.

"If you use resistance electric heating to heat an average house in New Zealand, it produces about 300 kilograms of carbon a year, roughly speaking.

“But if you use a heat pump instead it's only 100kg- so the saving is 200, and the impact of cooling with that same heat pump in a really hot house in summer would be less than 100kg.

“So it tends to be a much smaller impact."

        From Morning Report, 8:20 am today

I don't run them all the time, preferring to give the room a quick blast when it's too hot. At first I gave the rooms a frigid blast, or 17 degrees but read that this was inefficient. Now I set the units at 20 degrees and, if the rooms are say 25 degrees plus then 10 minutes of running at 20 degrees makes a huge difference.

I don't know why Richard thinks that my posts are boring. Can anyone tell me?

From Richard's Bass Bag