As an Alaskan transplanted to the New England area, my battle with the summer heat has been a constant uphill struggle to find some kind of happy medium to keep my core temperature from becoming entirely unpleasant. My current solution has been to have a window AC unit at home set to as close to glacial as physically possible. Come winter I have a different problem of not wanting to spend excessive money on keeping my apartment warm. In an ideal world my residence would have thermostats in each individual room so that my bedroom was toasty, the living room pleasant, and if I magically had any other rooms in the space they wouldn't be huge energy draws. In a more realistic version of reality getting a rented apartment to have a highly granular zoned temperature control is unlikely, so how is a renter to reduce their apartment's heating costs. REVERSE AIR-CONDITIONING otherwise known as "Air Source Heat Pumps" can be used to capture the thermal energy of the outdoors (yes, if it is above zero degrees Fahrenheit, possibly colder, you can harvest thermal energy from the ambient air).
Currently there are a range of these heating systems available for general consumption, but none of them, according to my ten minute web search, are designed to be seasonally added to a window sill. The benefit of this could be huge, instead of home owners buying incredibly inefficient heating element style home heating systems, consumers could buy a smart window unit that would capture ambient outdoor energy.
Design challenges would be great, but not insurmountable. The total cost of the unit would need to achieve a reasonably short ROI, preferably less than three years, ideally less than one. Cost consideration is where a clever business plan is most important. Depending on the actual material cost of this system home-owners might balk at the up-front cost and not buy in, regardless of long term saving potential, so how do you get people to invest in a long term money saver, options include but are not limited to a model similar to roof top solar companies that rent your roof space and sell you the power. The window heat pumps would not be owned by the home owner, but by a leasing organization, where the home-owner/renter simply buys the hot air from the company (some political joke here). Power producers that identify customers who use electrical heating in their space could provide financial incentives to offset the cost to the consumer. The window system would need to weigh no more than that of a currently available window AC unit that consumers would use in the summer. After cost and weight are accounted for in the design, ease of use and ideally overall attractiveness of the design should then be accounted for.
Down the line dream features, the system can change which side it is pumping heat to and from, cooling in the summer, warming in the winter. Connectivity to smart home systems, allowing the unit to know when to crank up the heat, ideally it could work with other systems in the home in concert, allowing for finer control of home energy use.
An alternative technology that I am unsure if it deserves its own post, so I will write it down here for the moment.
Smart blinds and curtains. Windows can allow for a large amount of thermal energy to enter or escape the home, even well insulated windows can allow the energy of visible spectrum light to come and go as it pleases. Well designed window coverings could offset some of a home's energy use (I'm going to need to look into that particular number 7/27). On hot days in the summer, when no one is home, the smart blinds would lower a white and or silver curtain intended to reflect away excess sunlight. In the winter the blinds would lower a darker covering designed to convert the visible energy of the light into thermal energy that would go into the house. A very simple version of this system would use a small solar panel to power itself (or plug if need be) and use two types of curtains, one black one reflective to cool the house. More sophisticated versions would use either smart materials or several layers of curtain material to give finer control of the amount of light allowed in and energy converted.
links for me to embed later http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/air-source-heat-pumps
http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/heat-pump-systems
Currently there are a range of these heating systems available for general consumption, but none of them, according to my ten minute web search, are designed to be seasonally added to a window sill. The benefit of this could be huge, instead of home owners buying incredibly inefficient heating element style home heating systems, consumers could buy a smart window unit that would capture ambient outdoor energy.
Design challenges would be great, but not insurmountable. The total cost of the unit would need to achieve a reasonably short ROI, preferably less than three years, ideally less than one. Cost consideration is where a clever business plan is most important. Depending on the actual material cost of this system home-owners might balk at the up-front cost and not buy in, regardless of long term saving potential, so how do you get people to invest in a long term money saver, options include but are not limited to a model similar to roof top solar companies that rent your roof space and sell you the power. The window heat pumps would not be owned by the home owner, but by a leasing organization, where the home-owner/renter simply buys the hot air from the company (some political joke here). Power producers that identify customers who use electrical heating in their space could provide financial incentives to offset the cost to the consumer. The window system would need to weigh no more than that of a currently available window AC unit that consumers would use in the summer. After cost and weight are accounted for in the design, ease of use and ideally overall attractiveness of the design should then be accounted for.
Down the line dream features, the system can change which side it is pumping heat to and from, cooling in the summer, warming in the winter. Connectivity to smart home systems, allowing the unit to know when to crank up the heat, ideally it could work with other systems in the home in concert, allowing for finer control of home energy use.
An alternative technology that I am unsure if it deserves its own post, so I will write it down here for the moment.
Smart blinds and curtains. Windows can allow for a large amount of thermal energy to enter or escape the home, even well insulated windows can allow the energy of visible spectrum light to come and go as it pleases. Well designed window coverings could offset some of a home's energy use (I'm going to need to look into that particular number 7/27). On hot days in the summer, when no one is home, the smart blinds would lower a white and or silver curtain intended to reflect away excess sunlight. In the winter the blinds would lower a darker covering designed to convert the visible energy of the light into thermal energy that would go into the house. A very simple version of this system would use a small solar panel to power itself (or plug if need be) and use two types of curtains, one black one reflective to cool the house. More sophisticated versions would use either smart materials or several layers of curtain material to give finer control of the amount of light allowed in and energy converted.
links for me to embed later http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/air-source-heat-pumps
http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/heat-pump-systems
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