Ice Cold Air Conditioners in New York

July 25th, 2007 Alex

In New York, a company called Credit Suisse is using a creative energy saving system that uses blocks of ice to cool the office. The system is developed by Trane, the air conditioner division of American Standard. There are about 3,000 of these ice-cooling systems worldwide that can save the company money as well as helping the environment. Since electricity is still needed to make the ice, water is frozen in large tanks every night when the power demand is low. The cool air from the ice blocks is then piped through the building. At the end of the day the water will get frozen again following the cycle. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will also be using a similar system in the headquarters office in downtown New York. The system at Credit Suisse is using 900 kilowatts less and has reduced overall electrical usage by 2.15 million kilowatts per hour annually. The system also costs more than 3 million to implement, but for large companies, the ROI can be seen faster. This is another technology that should be implemented by new buildings that get developed as well as Government buildings. If a city or state wants to set an example of going green, this is another great example. I have also heard of datacenters in Chicago that use the cool air in the winter from outside to cool the inside. For cold areas, that works even better because it is using a natural resource but of course it only works in the winter and would need another source of energy for the other seasons such as wind power. Even though using cold air from the outside only works in the winter, and a company would need to use A/C in the other seasons, it is still saving electricty for those 3 months out of the year which is still better than nothing.

via Yahoo News

Entry Filed under: Environment,Green Tech