Even when you compare an air conditioner to a heater, they are very, very energy hungry. This is why energy efficient technology is very important when it comes air conditioning unit, but mostly the ones on the market still have high energy consumption. This might not be the case for much longer though.
In 2014 it was announced that a new technology in the space cooling industry could see the amount of energy required to produce the same result of current technology reduced by up to 90%. How does this work, you might be asking? Well, first you need to understand a little about the current technology:
Air conditioners function in basically the same way as a refrigerator, in that they absorb the heat energy in one space and then direct that heat to another area. Fridges are very energy hungry too, but when you consider how much larger the space an air conditioner is trying to cool you can see why they are so expensive to run. The difference between the way a fridge and an air conditioner works is basically down to how a fridge calls the interior and expels the heat while an air conditioner absorbs the in the surroundings and contains it in the interior.
The new tech which is allowing us to cool space far more efficiently is actually a water absorbing gel. Previously we could also follow the same process as the new versions of air conditioners do, but because the water absorbing materials were a rarity, demands couldn’t be met.
The water absorbing gel is important because, when the water in the air conditioning units heats up and turns to vapour, without the gel you need to use energy to compress the vapour back into a liquid; with the gel, the water vapour can be absorbed and the heat removed without the need to expend energy on compression.