Blue Frontier, Inc. and our colleagues at National Renewable Energy Laboratory were featured in the latest episode of NPR’s award-winning podcast by WHYY ThePulse, “The Big Chill and the Future of Refrigeration”!
You can listen to the full podcast here
Starting at 33m30s, Alan Yu and Blue Frontier’s CEO Daniel Betts, PhD, MBA explain that Air Conditioning is “the most annoying electricity load”, because everyone turns them on at the same time when it’s hottest. This drives peak electricity consumption in the grid. Blue Frontier fixes this by making air conditioners act as a battery, separating their energy consumption from when air conditioning is provided. This ties AC electricity consumption to renewable energy, eliminates peak loads, and increases the reliability of the building’s critical occupant comfort systems.
Blue Frontier ACs create huge reductions in electricity consumption (from 50% to more than 90%). As mentioned in the podcast, Blue Frontier uses water evaporation to create cooling regardless of location (even in tropical South Florida, where the company is based). Water evaporation does not use electricity, creating extraordinary efficiency gains.
You can also find an excerpt here starting at 7m40s.
