

Among the costs of war: $20 Billion in Air Conditioning - wallflower
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning

======
rdl
The "air conditioners in uninsulated tents" thing was always kind of jarring
to me.

Part of it is due to accounting -- operational expenses like fuel are treated
as operations expenses, but building buildings is a capital improvement and
has a different budgeting process.

~~~
bdunbar
The tents I've seen with A/C units (this was early 90s) were made of a
different fabric than the standard tents we berthed in. I believe this was a
sort of insulated tent to retain the cooled air. Another reason for the A/C
units was to filter dusty air to keep that grit away from computers.

~~~
rdl
A lot of the tents did have liners (the "official" GP tents), designed for
heating/cooling.

However, a lot of tents were locally contracted pavilion-type tents, which
then got air conditioned as well.

~~~
bdunbar
Thank you for updating my knowledge, rdl.

------
mcritz
By comparison, the NASA budget is $20 Billion. The cost to give every child in
America a free school lunch is $20 Billion. The National Science Foundation
(NSF) is requesting less than $8 Billion this year. The entire National
Institute of Health (NIH) budget is $31 Billion. The Environment Protection
Agency responsible for assuring breathable air & safe water against every
corporate interest is asking for less than $9 Billion this year. The U.S.
“Smart Grid” industry is worth $21 Billion.

Et cetra.

~~~
encoderer
Things like this really just blow my mind. Our world is getting more and more
complex each year, and out voters are not being more and more sophisticated.
And our electioneering systems are not doing anything to aid that either.

I am an optimist but if our nation sees significant decline ahead, I think
it's in no small part due to the drag of our BS political cluster^^^^ in
Washington DC.

As a great American once said, "Our problems are man-made, therefore they may
be solved by man." The trouble to me is that we've got nobody minding the
store. People support policies -- on both sides of the aisle -- that are
obviously and objectively against their self interest because they buy into
political advertising and dogma the same way they buy into _I'm a Mac, I'm a
PC_.

I'm an optimist, but i see precious few problems being solved by those we the
people hire to do our statecraft.

~~~
chopsueyar
What makes you optimistic?

------
buro9
Since air-conditioners operate in the hottest parts of the world, why aren't
they solar powered?

Do they just require far more power than can be got from current solar tech?

edit: It seems that it's possible:
<http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/solar_powered_t.php>
[http://wingnutgear.com/product_details.cfm?product_id=155...](http://wingnutgear.com/product_details.cfm?product_id=155&image_id=116)

~~~
Klinky
You'd be lucky to have that 25 watt solar panel power a fan much less an AC
unit. Most in-window a/c units take about 600 - 1200 watts. They also run on
A/C power, not DC which is what you get from solar panels. Getting enough
amperage from a solar panel is going to be difficult.

You would probably need about 4 of these:
[http://www.ecodirect.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=Cana...](http://www.ecodirect.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=Canadian-
Solar-CS5P-250M&site=google_base)

Then maybe you could start talking about powering something like a 5,000 BTU
air conditioner.

~~~
rottyguy
How difficult would it be to do a geo-thermal like system? Instead of coolant
+ heat exchanger, can you just force warm air down some pipes buried in the
earth (running some distance) and having the thermal exchange occur
"naturally" to surface as cool air at the other end of the pipe? In which
case, (solar) fans might be all that is needed to run the system (though
burying the pipes would require some work)

~~~
willyt
You are talking about a Ground source heat pump. Once you are down about 10m
the temperature of the ground is fairly constant at about 10-14 degrees C. You
can exploit this temperature difference for either heating or cooling using a
heat pump.

~~~
rottyguy
Indeed though the ones I've read about uses some type of liquid coolant for
heat/cool interchange. Just curious if circulating just air through the piping
would suffice as a poor-mans implementation thus reducing the need for the
above ground exchanger.

------
RickHull
Ancient desert interior climate control:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhchal>

~~~
chopsueyar
From the wikipedia Yakhchal article:

 _...made out of a special mortar called sārooj, composed of sand, clay, egg
whites, lime, goat hair, and ash in specific proportions, and which was
resistant to heat transfer. This mixture was thought to be completely water
impenetrable._

Organic styrofoam!

------
JabavuAdams
Wonder how this compares to the cost of irrigation and planting shade trees in
long-duration bases. Shade and mortar protection.

Probably cheaper to just dig in underground.

~~~
encoderer
Yes. As a taxpayer in one of the higher tax brackets (like most here are i
presume) I sincerely hope they plan infrastructure on established bases the
way you describe.

The US Military has a habit of staying where it goes. Many people have
opinions on that, I do not, but I am a realist so I think its fair to assume
that if you've got a large, established base in a warzone (like the Green Zone
in Baghdad), treat it like you'll be using it for 100 years. Because if
history is any indication, you will be.

~~~
eru
And even if not, you can probably try selling it to the locals when you are
going.

~~~
anamax
> And even if not, you can probably try selling it to the locals when you are
> going.

Why would they pay anything? You're leaving so it will be free then and you
won't leave sooner if they pay.

~~~
eru
You could destroy it instead.

------
kshcho
At first, I was going to say it's tiny relative to the overall DoD budget...
but if true, it's actually pretty ridiculous: \- 0.5% of the US federal budget
overall (including entitlement programs) \- 3-4% of the overall defense budget
\- More than 2x the budget of the FBI \- ~40% of the Homeland Security budget
($47B) \- Rather close to the budget allocation for the Marine Corp ($29B)
(though there might technically be some overlap there)

If that's for 2 wars in 2 countries, what's government's total air
conditioning bill? Our soldiers deserve it, but there's gotta be a better way.

------
creativeone
If anyone finds real solar powered A/C systems, please posts it here or email
me, I'd like to import them into Israel.

~~~
creativeone
If anyone wants to partner to invent one, I'd also be interested in raising
the money and doing marketing.

~~~
MortenK
<http://lmgtfy.com/?q=solar+powered+A%2FC+systems>

:-)

~~~
chopsueyar
That is pretty dick.

~~~
MortenK
The point was: Get over the inertia and do something about the idea (finding
and importing solar powered a/c's). "Pretty dick"? I guess it might be
perceived like that. Wasn't intended though, hence the :-)

------
chopsueyar
Why not a giant tarp suspended above all the tents in the group to
absorb/reflect radiant heat and keep all the tents in the shade?

That should reduce the amount of energy required to cool the tents.

~~~
pstuart
Why be efficient when you can get all the money you want anyway?

~~~
chopsueyar
Alas, the supply is close by, but the refineries are so far away.

------
iwwr
Can air conditioners be driven directly by gasoline engines rather than
generators->electrical AC? Perhaps just replacing the electro-compressor with
an in-place gas version.

~~~
rdl
Yes, but it's not really a good idea in this kind of environment.

Generally they'd run 200-500KW diesel generators in a unit generator farm,
then run power cabling (3 phase) out to PDUs in clusters of tents, with
single-phase runs to standard military ECUs (air conditioners) attached to
each tent. They also need electricity INSIDE the tents, for computers,
lighting, etc.

Generators are noisy, need to be serviced and fueled, and the small ones
(~10KW) that you'd want to run on an HVAC are less efficient (especially for
diesel), loud, etc. You also don't want fuel tankage near tents which might be
hit by incoming mortars...especially mogas (gasoline)
tankage...JP8/Jet-A/diesel is a fair bit less bad.

Over time, they moved to a "prime power" system for the larger bases, with a
big farm of 2MW gensets run by a contractor, and an on-base power distribution
system, sort of like towns in Alaska, islands, etc.

Using an engine to directly run HVAC is done on reefers
(insulated/refrigerated shipping containers), but even those are moving more
and more to electrical hookups (so when they're in a big storage area, they
can all be connected to cheaper power).

Some of this power was for things like a 20 x 20 grid of 16-man tents, each
with HVAC.

I still think the primary consumer of liquid fuels was aviation -- fighters
taking off on afterburner, big cargo aircraft transporting tens of tons per
load, helicopters, etc.

------
hammock
If we figure - generously - that an American consumes $100/mo of A/C at work +
another $100 at home for six months, that is $1,200 for the year per capita

For the 150,000 soldiers in Iran and Afghanistan, the $20B comes to $130,000
per capita, or over 100x more

Just a fun comparison, not saying one way or the other here.

~~~
jbooth
That is a random ass number, you're saying my floor at work generates a 10k
monthly electricity bill?

Seems a bit high.

~~~
willyt
UK new build "best practice building" say about 140 kWh per square meter per
year total energy use (including HVAC). 8 square meters per person is packed
in desks like a call centre. £0.1 per kWh. 140 * 8 * 0.1 ~ £100 per year per
person = $160. Cheaper power costs in US. More extreme temperature
differences. Less strict energy conservation codes. All could skew this figure
considerably.

~~~
jbooth
Ok, but that's for everything. Seems the HVAC is one of those things that
really benefits from economics of scale.

~~~
willyt
Yeah, the AC is about 40kWh/year. Its not doing much for about 3/4 of the year
in the UK though. Economies of scale do make a big difference. In a large
building with 1000's of peeps air supply fans (fan coil units), chillers and
heat rejection would be separate pieces of kit. Heat rejection is generally
done by rooftop cooling towers sometimes supplemented by ground sink borehole.
Supply air is cooled at the fan coil units, which are supplied by with water
cooled by the chillers. There are lots of variations for a system like this
but as described above is a pretty typical office building set-up in the UK
building industry at the moment.

~~~
jbooth
I wasn't doubting your numbers, I haven't confirmed but you seem to know what
you're talking about.

I just had an intuitive problem with the original post's assertion that
office-space cooling in permanent structures could be anywhere near as
expensive to run as cooling non-permanent structures in a 120 degree desert
warzone, serviced by Halliburton contractors.

------
wedesoft
Maybe they should build windcatchers. That's what the locals use. There's one
in the Dubai Museum [1] and its amazing how well it works.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wind_Tower_Dubai.jpg>

------
nextparadigms
This is why much more transparency is necessary. So we can question expenses
such as these. Who knows how many hundreds of billions more are wasted for
similar things?

------
yannis
You can reduce the cost by a factor of 10, if you make the tents
"underground".

~~~
josefresco
I'm sure we have plenty of those kinds of "tents" installed on the
battlefield.

------
wdr1
Well, on the upside, it's good the US learned from Napolean's lesson.

------
kahawe
I am honestly wondering what the average temperature in a Bedouin or Mongolian
(sorry, for lack of better term) tent is and how one could apply this to troop
tents in the desert in general and ultimately save on A/C and fuel because
many generations of men have proven to successfully survive in the desert long
before fuel and a/c has been invented.

~~~
Duff
People living in the desert dress in a particular way and adapt to the heat.

They also build their permanent structures in a way that maximizes airflow and
cools the building. There was a NYT article a few years ago about an 800 year
old, un-air conditioned mosque in Baghdad where the temperature was in the low
70's year round.

Pre air-conditioning, western buildings had features like this as well.

~~~
starwed
I'm slightly frustrated by my current apartment in this regard -- it's an
older building, built with the assumption of no air conditioning. There are
vents on the interior walls to allow air flow with the interior hallway, which
is always pleasantly cool. The management has shuttered those vents, but not
added any AC!

~~~
chopsueyar
Google "minisplit".

~~~
starwed
If I could fit that into my budget, I would have been living in a nicer place
to begin with. :P

