Cooling Savings

Cooling Peak Savings

According to the California Department of Finance;, there are about 12 million residences in California, of which 7.5 million are single family residences. The rest are multifamily, many of which have forced air heating and cooling systems just like single family residences. According to the Energy Information Administration¹, about 70% of residences have forced air duct systems (either gas heated, electrically cooled, or both). Therefore it is reasonable to use about 8 million as the potential number of systems to be targeted.

Consider a typical air conditioning system of 4 Tons (with electricity demand of about 5.6 kW). Just sealing leaks would reduce this by 20%, or 1.1 kW. About one third of California residences have air conditioning and about one third of these have the system operating during peak. Therefore the statewide peak demand savings is about 8 million houses x 1.1kW x 1/3 x 1/3=1 GW.

Additional peak savings are available from a more complete strategy that consistes of a total system upgrade. Combining the reduced leakage with correcting refrigerant charge and air flow problems allows us to replace existing high capacity air conditioners with correctly sized more efficient units of significantly lower power consumption. The peak savings could then be doubled to about 2 GW.

1. Energy Information Administration. 1997. Residential Energy Consumption Survey - Housing Characteristics 1997.