Electricity a luxury in Baghdad - air conditioning just not an option
Chicago Tribune: After 4 years, electricity still luxury
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-electricity_jun25,1,5068598.story?page=2&coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
Whatever your views on the war this article in the Chicago Tribune by James Janega and Nadeem Majeed gives pause for thought. The main points in this fascinating article seem to be:
Reconstruction costs have drained the budget and the problem is still not fixed.
Fixing the Iraqi national grid isn't the greatest technical challenge. Fixing it under fire is!
Numerous planned power outages each day.
Entrepreneurial private suppliers are charging $12 per day to supply a limited amount of power for a few hours.
So, for the average householder, there's stark choices to make in how electricity is used. Air conditioning takes more energy than there is available, so it's not an option. Ceiling fans can be powered but they mainly waft air around the room without benefitting the occupants.
The brutal truth is that in such high temperatures, sweating, and the evaporation of sweat are the only practical way of staying cool. Unless you have air conditioning - which they can't power. The reason the ceiling fans aren't effective is that the air flow near the people is too low velocity and doesn't facilitate the evaporation of sweat.
How would we do things differently? Well, first of all we'd use spray bottles to mist the skin. Second we'd use one of our low energy coolers to move air directly over the skin surface - evaporating the "sweat". And as a strategy we'd power our coolers from the mains when it was working and also charge up some AA batteries to see us through the power outages.
As our system will use between 3 and 4 watts and a ceiling fan uses about 60 watts then this would free up power for other household appliances. Or looking at the big picture, reducing demand using energy efficient alternatives would actually mean less power outages each day.
Frankly we're seeing this problem in Baghdad now, but with the demand for energy in California so close to the amount available to be supplied, then maybe it's something we'll see a bit more of in the future. But on our doorstep.