![]() ![]() It may be fine on the hottest days, but "if 90% of the time is oversized," it's not efficient, he says.ĪFP via Getty Images Employees working on an air conditioner production line at a Midea factory in Guangzhou, in China's southern Guangdong province, last July. Not so, according to Reinhard Radermacher, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland. Simply installing a bigger air conditioner might sound like a solution to the problem. Higher humidity also places "a humongous additional load" on an air conditioning system, he says. "So, the higher the ambient temperature, the more the compressor has to work, the more electricity needed, and the problem just keeps getting compounded," he says.Ĭompressors work less efficiently at higher heat, which means they need more power to do the job. The hotter the outdoor temperature, the more effort (and energy) needed to make the climb. He compares the energy required to do this to climbing a mountain. ![]() The refrigerant is then recycled in a closed loop. Garimella explains that all air conditioners work on the same basic principle - a cold, low-pressure refrigerant evaporates and absorbs heat from a room and then is compressed before condensing and releasing the heat by way of an outdoor heat exchanger. Under these conditions, "your efficiency drops and you actually lose a little capacity, which means the unit is going to run non-stop," according to James Barry, who owns Doctor Cool & Professor Heat, a company in League City, a suburb of Houston. That's a hot day, but we're having more and more of those days," he says. well in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit in recent days, that can pose a big problem, says Srinivas Garimella, a professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. With temperatures in many parts of the U.S. ![]() With much of the country in the grips of a massive heat wave, many people who have air conditioners in their homes are running them overtime.īut these extreme temperatures present a significant challenge to AC systems, which engineers and installers say are really only designed to keep indoor temperatures about 20 degrees cooler than outside. ![]()
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