We humans have been cooling ourselves, and our property, for a very long time. As far back as ancient Egypt, we were using fans and evaporative cooling to beat the heat. Modern air conditioning was invented in the early 1900’s by Willis Carrier. His original intent was to regulate (reduce) the humidity in a magazine publishing house, but the approach he hit on involved doing so by cooling the air and he was wise enough to realize the value of that in its own right.
The technology he developed is still used by modern air conditioning systems today. That is, until right now. CoolFactor’s patented technology does what Mr. Carrier’s did, at less cost and using less power. It is as game changing to the cooling business as the microprocessor was to the computer world. Imagine buying Intel in 1973.
CoolFactor technology is the first significant breakthrough in air conditioning in the last 100 years. It utilizes proven and well-understood thermodynamic processes, in a new way, to produce cooling that it more than twice as efficient as the best air conditioner systems on the market today. This patented technology allows us to reduce costs and improve reliability by eliminating refrigerants, compressors, and one set of heat exchanger coils.
Conventional air conditioning systems are either all on or all off. They vary their cooling effect by regulating how much of the time they are on, what’s called their duty cycle. When they get activated, the electric motors driving their compressors have a startup current that is two to three times what they draw once they get up to speed. This requires a larger, heavier gage, electric power infrastructure (cabling, circuit breakers, …). This starting and stopping also increases the wear-and-tear they are subjected to. It also creates peaks and valleys in the room temperatures they produce. With the exception of the relatively-few systems that have expensive bypass modules installed, they operate the same regardless of what the outside air temperature is.
By contrast, CoolFactor equipment regulates its power to deliver exactly the amount of cooling needed to meet the current heat load. When ambient conditions permit, it utilizes the cooler outside temperatures to cool with even less energy than the more than twice as good mentioned above. The control system varies the speed of the system to match the work it has to do. This eliminates the start-up overdraw previously mentioned for conventional systems. Overall, that reduces the cost of the electric power infrastructure by a factor of at least three. CoolFactor technology also has fewer moving parts than conventional systems. This is will significantly reduce maintenance time and money.
The systems are designed in a modular architecture that has two major advantages over the conventional monolithic approach used by current air conditioning units. First, it allows for incremental growth of cooling capacity, which fits what several of our more obvious customers need. Second, it allows repair operations to take place on a single unit while the overall system is still in full operation.
The worlds air conditioning market is currently around $102 billion per year, with a growth rate (CAGR) of around 9.9%. Two of the largest growth areas are indoor agriculture and computer data centers, which both feature round the clock highly-concentrated heat loads. CoolFactor’s adaptive nature brings unique solutions to each of these applications, offering reduced capital and operating costs compared to conventional systems.
Manufacturing costs and natural resources required in the fabrication of CoolFactor will be less than that of conventional systems. Given better margins and social benefits of being environmentally responsible should help catapult us on the worlds stage. With a lobby effort there is a reasonable expectation that legislation will be adopted with standards of efficiency beyond what conventional system can attain. Similar to what has occurred in the lighting industry with the adoption of LED lights.
Installation costs will be less for many reasons. A quick example is the switch to lighter gauge electrical wire and smaller capacity circuit breakers, due to a lower power demand. The modular architecture will also reduce the labor needed for initial installation and subsequent addition of new units for larger additional capacity.
Operating costs (Dollars per ton of cooling delivered) will vary slightly by region, but will always be far enough below conventional systems to be compelling to whoever it is that it paying the power bill.
There is an opportunity in this, namely that CoolFactor offers cooling (delivered) master service agreement, not cooling systems (equipment), like what the solar industry has done with power. The technology alone can stand the industry on its head. Changing the game itself will do more than that. In addition to creating the sort of industry buzz any growing company wants, it will allow us to participate in the cost savings (that others might not be ready to believe). The service model agreement in long term will sustain higher profits than just selling components.