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A comment on Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara. Parent comment

Re:Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the... by SECProto on Thursday September 06, 2018 @10:54PM (#17931541)
Heat transfer, though, is based on temperature differentials - if Miami is +7degrees every day of the year, and Phoenix is +20degrees only 117 days per year, the energy demands of Phoenix for cooling could very easily be much higher (energy lost through walls, roof would be much higher, as would mass transfer of energy when doors open.) This is irrespective of local construction. Add to this, radiative gain (insolation through windows) is not captured in the degree-days statistic, nor is humidity related cooling (condensing water takes a lot of energy!)
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Re:Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the... by sampo on Friday September 07, 2018 @01:48AM (#17932142)
No. No no.

Heat conduction rate is linear in response to the temperature difference [1], so 1 day of 20 degrees difference should give the same total heat loss as 2 days of 10 degrees difference. They also both give 20 degree days, so degree days is the correct measure and should correlate linearly with the energy needed for heating or cooling. The same goes for the heat content in the air that is exchanged due to draft, opening doors etc.

You might have a little bit of a point with sunlight, and humidity. But my guess is that they don't dominate, compared to the conductive and convective heat exchanges.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conduction#Fourier's_l...

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Re:Modeled impact of large-scale wind and solar farms in the... by SECProto on Friday September 07, 2018 @09:33PM (#17938883)
Right, thank you for the correction. I was mistaken about the conduction. I'm not sure why I was thinking it was something other than linear. So degree days should account fairly closely for the conductive heat transfer through walls.

I think my comment about mass transfer when opening doors could maaaybe be defensible but I'll leave it alone :)

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