I thought the same thing. But looking at it, its still mostly wrong, but it is slightly less crazy than it first sounds.
I compared the watts per square meter coming down from sunlight (about 1000 at sea level according to the top google hit) and compared it to the watts of an air con system, 3000 acordong to some google hit (in the long run it will only heat the outside by its power consumption, although in the short term the heat from your house will add more), then we see the ac is like another 3 square meters of sun light.
So if you live somewhere where the density of dwellings is low, say a detached house with garden, then 3 extra square meters is nothing compared the square meter-age you already cover. But if you live in a 20 story appartment building in a city centre surroudned by similar buildings, and everyone runs ac, then maybe the ‘dwellings per square meter’ will be high enough that the ac will be adding energy that is non-negligable compared to the solar energy. (If we took +15% as our ‘non negligable’ threshold then the critical density is about 0.05 dwellings per square meter. Meaning in 100 square meters we have 5 dwellings adding 15 effective sunlight meters.) So maybe in Singapore this actually matters a little.
It still seems weird to single out ac though. The heat dissipated by driving a car through the city is surely much larger.
I thought the same thing. But looking at it, its still mostly wrong, but it is slightly less crazy than it first sounds.
I compared the watts per square meter coming down from sunlight (about 1000 at sea level according to the top google hit) and compared it to the watts of an air con system, 3000 acordong to some google hit (in the long run it will only heat the outside by its power consumption, although in the short term the heat from your house will add more), then we see the ac is like another 3 square meters of sun light.
So if you live somewhere where the density of dwellings is low, say a detached house with garden, then 3 extra square meters is nothing compared the square meter-age you already cover. But if you live in a 20 story appartment building in a city centre surroudned by similar buildings, and everyone runs ac, then maybe the ‘dwellings per square meter’ will be high enough that the ac will be adding energy that is non-negligable compared to the solar energy. (If we took +15% as our ‘non negligable’ threshold then the critical density is about 0.05 dwellings per square meter. Meaning in 100 square meters we have 5 dwellings adding 15 effective sunlight meters.) So maybe in Singapore this actually matters a little.
It still seems weird to single out ac though. The heat dissipated by driving a car through the city is surely much larger.