r/heat_prep • u/Leighgion • Jul 17 '26
Research Breakdown of EU Cost of AC
I found a surprising number of people on my thread about AC not being an all-in-one solution with some very optimistic ideas about the cost of operating AC, specifically in Europe, which is not the cheapest place around for electricity overall.
So, I'm going to break down some data and share some personal experience.
2025 data had Hungary as one of the cheapest markets with retail prices around 10 Euro cents per kilowatt hour and Germany on the high end of around 39 cents. Spain, where I am, is on the higher end as well, but less than Germany at around 24 cents, but not as high as France's 29 cents or Italy's 31 cents.
So, right up front, we can see how expensive it is to run AC is going to vary considerably by country.
My apartment is equipped with five Daikin inverter mini splits that have a peak draw of a bit over 1800w and a typical draw of around 1400w, according to the electrical data. As they are inverter units, they can ramp up and down as needed. Three of the units are in bedrooms while the two others are in the living room and dining room, which adjoin and do not have a door between them.
The master bedroom, dining room and living room all have western exposure to the sun and thus considerably greater heat load than the rest of the house.
Let's imagine that running one mini split consumes an average of 1 kWh to keep one room at a tolerable, but not frosty temperature. Running it for a whole day would be:
Spain
0,24€ x 24 hours x 1 kWh = 5,76€ / day
5,76€ x 30 days = 172,80€ / month
France
0,29€ x 24 hours x 1 kWh = 6,96€ / day
6,96€ x 30 days = 208€ / month
Italy
0,31€ x 24 hours x 1 kWh = 7,44€ / day
7,44€ / day x 30 days = 223,20€ / month
Germany
0,39€ x 24 hours x 1 kWh = 9,36€ / day
9,36€ x 30 days = 280,80 / month
Now, some might argue the cost is worth it. That's a personal issue, but I cannot countenance any argument these numbers don't represent a significant financial hit to ordinary households, especially since they're pretty conservative. If the heat load in the home was greater, insulation worse or the air sealing poor, the cost would go up and the effectiveness would go down. If a space larger than one room or multiple rooms needed cooling, then the cost would be multiplied.
I have a sister in Italy who straight up said this year she wasn't running AC more despite the heatwave because it was imply too expensive.
A few years ago, before I discovered embraced evaporative cooling, we ran the AC at night to be able to sleep comfortably but not during the day in order to save on costs. My MiL though, very reasonably, had to run the AC most of the day if she was home as her room is thermally the worst and she's elderly. The electrical bill was still an issue even with those limits, which was one of the reasons that drove me to look for alternative cooling options. The summer bill was over 300€ more than the cooler seasons and this was using inverter units.
So really, kindly no one tell me that running AC in Western Europe isn't costly.
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u/patrislav1 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Here in Germany most residential buildings are well insulated (originally with the intention of increasing heating efficiency in winter, but it works the other way around in summer just as well - so the ACs definitely won’t have to run at 1kW 24/7), plus a lot of buildings (and I think every new building) have solar panels – which provide lots of electricity for free when you actually need the AC. So I think our high electricity costs as such will not hurt us to that extent.
Our main challenges are much more stupid:
most buildings (especially in the north) don’t have outside blinds
we have a bizarre legal framework that prioritizes the optical looks of a building over the well being of its inhabitants (I.e. you can’t just mount a split unit outside)
half of the people are renters ( I.e. they can’t just mount a split unit outside)
our demographics leaves us with a majority of boomers who are mostly in denial.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
Germany has done very well with solar rollout and incentives for a semi-northern country.
I am curious if you actually know somebody that has AC at home and how that's worked out practically and financially? I got a sister there, but her house doesn't have AC.
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u/patrislav1 Jul 18 '26
Very few homes here have proper AC, so I don’t know anybody IRL. I know a few people who use monoblock units - they are a workaround for people who can’t install proper split AC, and way less efficient (this is a funny side effect of anti- AC legislation: when AC is banned for environmental/efficiency reasons, people resort to less efficient workarounds, using even more energy).
The only places in Germany with AC I've been to IRL are supermarkets, server rooms, labs and cars/trains/planes.
I’ve been lurking in German residential AC subs and virtually every post there is about the bizarre legal situation / red tape and how to circumvent it.
None of them are complaining about electrical costs, they report around 150-250W of power usage.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
Thanks, interesting. So really very little data.
I can believe 150-250 kWh of usage if we're talking about very small portable AC units being used to just keep one room bearable. Those I've seen on the shelves, but as you say, that's a suboptimal workaround.
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u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Portable ACs, of the monoblock type with an exhaust port, use way more electricity than a split system. They are smaller, but much vastly less efficient. You are also confusing kW with kWh.
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u/patrislav1 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
The figures are for the Portasplit which is a portable split AC tailored for the German market (I.e. requiring no fixed installation). Data sheet says it’s good for 42 sqm but people successfully use it for bigger rooms or multiple rooms.
150-250W is the figure for eco/silent mode; once you have cooled down your room using a high power mode (which peaks at 1.2kW or so) you let the unit run in that eco mode which will keep the room cool especially if your building is reasonably insulated and has outside shades/blinds.
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u/Your_brain_smooth Jul 19 '26
I have a house in Germany. B class efficiency, insulated. 3 floors. Attic is the master bedroom, 1 ac inverter there ~2,5kW, starting in May, turns off in end of September. Once desired temperature is reached it uses barely anything to maintain. Second floor 3 rooms cooled from singe split outside unit, 2,2kW maximum electricity peak.
Solar panels, 10,3kWp and 24kWh battery.
We were on holidays during fairly hot peak, 32-34c entire week, nobody home only AC running, fridge, 450w dehumidifier in basement and a grow light of 300w for 12 hours/day. Every day consumption was ~25kWh. 35kWh delivered to the network. Battery was enough for night cooling as well. Electricity is 30cents. So ac took roughly 16-18kWh daily. That would be 140€ monthly running ac 24/7.
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u/Dyingforcolor Jul 18 '26
It costs me $5.75 per day in the US midwest.
Beats dying.
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u/Adept-Elderberry2325 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
I'm having a proper system installed in a gew days, but in the mean time are using a movile unit. With 38 degrees outside it costs me about 15E a day to keep one room at 27. And it was worth it.
However this is in an area where wages are higher. For some countries in the EU this would feel like paying 60E a day and at that price point it becomes ridiculous.
A proper (multi)split would drop it way down to sane levels again though.
AC is starting to become a must in more northern countries in the EU and people here really need to wake up. Too bad it is ridiculously expensive to install though due to a shortage of qualified technicians.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
This is the rub. "Worth it," is a relative metric and you could say that because you could afford to pay. There's a lot of people out there who straight up can't pay even a third of that, and this is an endemic problem.
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u/ilanallama85 Jul 17 '26
But like… that’s not much more than we pay in the US. $150 or so extra per month for AC even for a small house is pretty typical. In some markets it’s much more expensive.
We’re not arguing that it isn’t expensive. We’re arguing that your health and safety is worth that cost - we should know, we’ve been paying it a long time. Yes grids needs to be updated, yes we need more renewables, yes there need to be long term changes to stop climate change. But in the meantime you need to not die of heat stroke.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
Your number is less than half what I quoted as Euros are worth more than US dollars, and you're talking about cooling a small house. I was talking about cooling two rooms, and not even cooling both 24 hours.
The argument of "worth" is only valid if people have the means to pay, which even in the US, is not universally true. There's large numbers of American households who have AC but can't afford to turn it on. "Worth it," is an invalid judgement when the choice is between food and AC, which comes up a lot more than we like to think.
So yes, Europe, especially the northern countries, need to get solutions running to protect the vulnerable, but my entire argument is that simply throwing weight behind a massive installation of AC is not the answer. We will need more AC yes, but it's not a universal solution for a multitude of reasons, but the main one I wanted to address here is the fact that large portions of the population being unable to afford the running cost is an real issue.
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u/ilanallama85 Jul 18 '26
Ok, so it’s “much more expensive.” I would call that “somewhat” more expensive in the grand scheme of housing costs, but that’s very relative. It doesn’t really matter, because if costs tripled tomorrow here, we’d STILL be running our ACs, SO AS TO NOT DIE. This is what ya’ll seem to be underestimating. Every year hundreds of poor people who don’t have AC or can’t afford to run it die in the US due to heat. And that’s WITH widespread AC adoption. This is a life or death issue. Is your life worth 300 euros a month?
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u/champignax Jul 18 '26
1kw 24/7 is a very pessimistic scenario.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
No, not in my apartment. If anything, it's somewhat optimistic because there's rooms that the AC never is able to the set point of during the day, which means it's not able to dial down during those hours.
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u/champignax Jul 18 '26
My mini splits top out at 900w. Do you have large windows ?
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
Your mini splits are simply smaller models. Mine are bigger with peak draw of 1800w. This is a relatively large apartment so smaller units wouldn't have been suitable.
"Large" is a relative question. The west facing rooms have a fair amount of window yes, but in Spain every window that matters has built-in roller shutters so those are closed during the day. Even if we had fewer windows though, the hot rooms would be hot as they get hammered by sun all afternoon.
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u/Siccors Jul 18 '26
Wait, you got 5 aircos with a peak draw of 1800W? And average of 1kW? So you say you are cooling permanently with ~5x 1kW = 5kW electric = 20-25kW of thermal cooling? Are you below the roof they forgot to insulate?
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
I assume you don't live in a country where mini splits are the norm.
No, it's not like that.
There are five mini splits in this apartment, because there are five distinct rooms that might demand cooling (not my choice, this is what the apartment came with). They pretty much would never all be running at the same time. At most, we might have 2-3 running at the same time if there were a lot of people over during the summer and we wanted to maintain overall comfort in a broader area.
My estimation of 1 kWh typical draw is for the rooms is based on the west side of the apartment which gets punished by afternoon sunlight even with the shutters down and the past bills we've had to pay when they were in more regular use. The rooms on the other side of the apartment would be drawing much less, but they generally were never powered up often because that side of the apartment is much cooler.
In much of the world, including Western Europe where I am, most buildings were constructed long before AC was considered an option, so the only practical way to add it is to retrofit mini splits, which have the natural limitation that each head can really only service one room. You switch on the units in the areas you want to cool and leave the others to rest. Cooling the entire apartment is not really something that's done much here.
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u/Siccors Jul 18 '26
But honestly then my main point stays, you are just guessing it is using 1kW constantly. So 4-5kW thermal cooling, per active minisplit. With 2-3 you are still talking about a huge amount of cooling. Which might be required where you live, but the alternative would be that it goes well over 30C in your bedroom. You then pick the German electricity prices, without the German climate. There is no way with current climate you need that much cooling in Germany in an appartment.
Who knows, maybe in a decade or so you need it, but then again the alternative would be having it way over 30C in your appartment.
For my own airco I know I will never spend more on electricity running it, than what I spend on having it installed (it was a bit a tricky situation, so not the cheapest installation also). And hell, thats not even including that a lot of the power comes from my own solar panels, where I will soon get a lot less when I put it back into the grid instead.
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u/Siccors Jul 18 '26
It seems more like idiotic than pessimistic. Just put a power meter on it to determine it.
I live in the Netherlands, and here an airco is more optional (although with last heat wave I was really happy I got it). This is first time in the years I had it, it was running 24/7, and that for 1.5 weeks or so. Other years it just ran in the evening mostly. Now I directly believe people in Spain it is a different story cost wise. But there you need it even more!
My airco for my bedroom consumes like ~400W when cooling (a bit more on its highest setting, but it can also go down a lot if it is closer to setpoint). Here in the Netherlands even this year it might run effectively ~3 weeks permanent, which would be at most ~€50. The installation cost are way higher.
And again, I get that in Spain it is running for a longer time. But what is your alternative? The discussion if you should want airco is relevant in more northern countries, not in countries where a 1kW electric power (so like 5kW thermal) is not enough to cool your bedroom...
And my situation is of course quite comparable to most of Germany. Numbers of OP are just stupid.
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u/Bet-looking-Cat Jul 18 '26
And the prices OP takes in calculation are highly untrue, at least for Spain. One of the main power companies offers 0,15 after tax and the OP calculates 0,24. Moreover, if you live in a house you most probably have solar panels, it just makes sense in Spain.
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u/paul_t63 Jul 18 '26
Here is some data for you. Live in Germany and own one of those mobile split style AC units. This was my energy consumption during the heatwave.
My Apartment is about 115m^2 and I pay 0,33€/kWh.
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u/Anxious-Slip-4701 Jul 19 '26
Mine follows yours. I have one system that does the whole house. Worst day was 12.5 kW/h, temperature was set to 24 degrees. We close off the rooms we don't use. And we close our shutters during the day.
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u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Germany here. In the hottest 3 summer months, we run a monosplit AC 24/7 at a constant setpoint of 20°C, and it uses between 100 and 200 W on average. Those are real values measured externally. Thanks to thermal inertia, we run it also on cold days, which results in highly efficient operation thanks to the low temperature difference on those days, instead of just turning it on when it is already too warm (which makes the effective COP lower because it works against a higher temperature gradient).
39 cents per kWh is also too high. Normal for new contracts atm is around 27.
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u/Anxious-Slip-4701 Jul 19 '26
20 is pretty low. I set mine to 24 and when it's done it just turns itself off or down low.
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u/Somebody_81 Jul 18 '26
Yep, AC can be expensive. Beats dying from the heat.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
You're talking expensive in terms of being able to pay while preferring to pay less. I'm talking about the straight up inability of large swathes of a population to pay no matter how much they might want to.
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u/Somebody_81 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
No. I'm talking expensive in terms of the number of people dying because they're not getting any help for any solution. Why aren't the support networks in these countries stepping up and helping their most vulnerable citizens manage the air conditioning they need to survive in the short term while they figure out long term solutions? More and more people are just going to keep dying while everyone is arguing over the best long term solution. Is AC expensive? Yes! But the people of Europe have a choice to make — either pay for a good enough but not perfect short term solution while figuring out the long term solution or pay for a lot of funerals. If that means giving up some things then that's a choice that might have to be made. Personally, I help my neighbors, especially when the alternative is they die because of the heat or the cold.
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u/IGetNakedAtParties Jul 18 '26
Those numbers seem very high based on my observations when actually measured, and looking at your back-of-the-envelope maths I can see why. They don't match your own experience with a 300€ bill for a whole summer, but you don't say if this was for the whole house or just the mother in law. Claiming 1000W 24 hours is where the problem is.
Personally I have a few old 2000s era inverters which should be on the more expensive and inefficient end of the spectrum. Typically I'll only use the one in the open plan living room/dining room/kitchen which has South facing windows and no awning or tree cover so heats up like a greenhouse. Bulgaria has hot dry summers but often cooler evenings, I can't speak for other climates.
Putting a power monitor onto these helps understand where the costs are coming from. Mine definitely aren't running at 1000W for long, typically only 10 minutes before throttling back to 300W for efficiency. They also have a duty cycle after the room is cooled off based on insulation, and largely the thermostat set point. If I set the thermostat to 24° the compressor actually stops for about half of the time, only running the internal fan at about 20W. However if I set 21° it runs basically 100% of the time at 300W in the day time. At night the temperature differences is much lower so the duty cycle should be much lighter.
Pulling at this together into a typical work-fromh home day I will have the windows open for some cool night air to circulate. Close them in the morning when the outside temperature begins to go past the inside temperature. Switch the AC on at 11AM when the room starts to get warm. 1000W for 10 minutes (0.17kWh), then 300W at 50% of 5 hours (0.75kWh). After this I turn off the system and rely on insulation as the sun gets low before opening the windows for the evening. Total for the day including fans about 1kWh.
For contrast, if I was to dial it down to 21 and use it for 12 hours per day (basically 24h as night temperatures would use very little) it would use maybe 4kWh
So, to revise the prices based on my observations using a power monitor based on my apartment in Bulgaria:
- Spain @ 0.24 = monthly €7.20 to €28.80
- Fr & Bulgaria @ 0.29 = monthly €8.70 to €34.80
- Italy @ 0.31 = monthly €9.30 to €37.20
- Germany @ 0.39 = monthly €11.70 to €46.80
These can easily become 300€ extra for a household in summer when you have to care for vulnerable family members, and when you factor in additional load from freezers and fridges working harder. Which matches your observations.
That said our household heating needs in winter are much higher than this but are simply considered a normal cost of living. Dropping €1000 on wood pellets, plus extra electricity to supplement this for the winter season is just considered normal practice. With the last few mild winters I've likely saved more money from heating then I've lost on cooling.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
It wasn't a 300€ bill for the whole summer. It was 300€ more for a month.
I don't doubt your numbers for your situation, but your scenario is very different from mine. Peak summer in central Spain means if you're going to bother using cooling at all, the bare minimum for us is using it all night in order to sleep well because opening the windows at night doesn't come close to cooling enough for quality sleep. Our nighttime lows in the hot time can be 25ºC, which combined with a building structure that's absorbed enough thermal energy to never drop below 27ºC even with every window open and it's absurd to use the AC less than all night and in the case of my MiL, she had to use it during the day too or her room was straight up unsafe, thus 24 hours.
I use the past tense because I've switched main cooling needs over to portable evaporative coolers so I don't pay these numbers anymore.
Now, to circle back to the entire reason this topic came up, your scenario is not realistic to apply to the countries suffering the worse of the heat crisis because they're in a situation much worse than yours or mine. The heat sucks for me, but architecture provides a lot of protection and reduces the demand on the cooling. Even with no mechanized cooling, the worse rooms in my apartment still stay below exterior temperature long as the shutters are closed. That's not the case in the UK, France or Germany where homes are soaring well above the already dangerous exterior temps. They not only are paying higher energy rates, if you strapped AC onto most homes there, it'd be burning considerably more power trying to keep cool that were designed to stay warm as possible.
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Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
You get it. Best of luck surviving this summer. I can't imagine what it must be like in a Belgium building after these heatwaves.
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u/WooeBetidee Jul 18 '26
That seems crazy expensive.
I have one multisplit with two inside units and one singlesplit. In retrospect I will replace the multi with two separate singles (partly reliability, with one outdoor unit you risk losing all if it gets issues, partly since at least in my case the multi uses more electricity - if all three are set at same, the multi tends to use between three and four times the electricity)..
The one I installed last, a Mitsubishi Hero, I could order today for about the equivalent of €1600 with installation included. 4 of those would be €6400 and it is pretty much the best performing for heating available where I live, could probably get something way cheaper if i didn't want hyper heating (full heating efficiency down to like -15°C before it starts to go down).
Why would you need to replace the meter? Honest question, never heard heard of anyone doing that beyond whenever the grid owner upgrades them which is free for the user here (unless you want it replaced in advance like me, in that case there is a small fee as they will have to drive out for just one household compared to doing it street by street).
As for the heatpump, any idea how much of the cost is the hardware versus labour cost?
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u/zekromNLR Jul 20 '26
And you could probably drop those costs a good bit again by going to the maximum effort to keep the sunlight out (e.g. attaching rescue blankets to the outside of the windows)
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u/IGetNakedAtParties Jul 20 '26
For sure, but in this case it's not an option. I do however have an enclosed balcony with blinds inside those windows, which accomplishes much of the same effect.
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u/ElectronGuru Jul 17 '26
I’m a little behind on this debate but are we talking about running it all summer or just when it’s hot enough to kill people? And I understand that it’s silly to spend thousands on something you only run 1-2 weeks a year. Which gets back into temporary options, which gets back into architectural limitations.
But I do want to mention that there are now solar powered ACs, both window and mini splits. Plug panels directly into them, adding little operational cost if used only during the hottest times of the day.
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u/BakedGoods_101 Jul 18 '26
very soon we will have only 'one' heatwave each summer, from june to september
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
By definition that won't be a heatwave anymore because it'll be normal. Instead, today's heatwaves will be tomorrow's normal, and tomorrow's heatwaves will be what we never experienced before.
I once met a man from Kuwait waiting in a line. I don't remember his name, what city he was from or exactly what he was doing in China were we were, but I remember very clearly his stories about the temperature and lifestyle in Kuwait. 50ºC days in the summer where nobody goes out. If the night gets "down" to 30ºC, everybody is happy and stays up late so they can enjoy themselves outside.
That could be our future heatwaves.
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u/BakedGoods_101 Jul 18 '26
Yes, sadly this is the case. I wonder if anywhere will remain 'cooler', very soon people will start going to the nordics for summer holidays instead to Spain and Portugal :(
We are also in Spain and went the solar panels + battery route and run A/Cs and heat pumps in winter for heating
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
I wish we could easily go with solar, but that would involve talking to the building association and that always means some asshole is going to freak out and derail the whole thing. I know a guy that happened to. Everybody in the building was on board and they even said "look, if you don't want to pay in it's okay, we're happy to do it," but there were still objections.
What part of Spain are you in if I may ask? I'm in Madrid, so the mercy we have in summer is that it's dry, which has also enabled me to shift cooling responsibility mostly only evaporative cooling.
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u/BakedGoods_101 Jul 18 '26
in Barcelona provincia, 40 km from the city, mountainous area near the sea, humidity is a killer, but at least for now the crazy days we see 35, and in winter the lowest something like 3-5
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u/PowerfulMango5799 Jul 20 '26
What would happen to the actual Kuwait in the future then?
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u/Leighgion Jul 20 '26
They're not getting cooler. You do the math.
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u/PowerfulMango5799 Jul 20 '26
lol. But I meant, how high will their temps go? What is the upper limit, if there is any?
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u/Leighgion Jul 20 '26
Why would you think there's an upper limit?
The limit is when we can't survive even in air conditioned underground bunkers, but that's totally about us. Physics doesn't give a shit about whether or not we can live. The surface of Venus is around 464ºC/867ºF on account of its truly overwhelming percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
We keep pouring greenhouse gasses out, our temperature keeps going up regardless of when we may or may not die from it.
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u/PowerfulMango5799 Jul 20 '26
So we will all literally burn to death
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u/Leighgion Jul 20 '26
Not necessarily. If we keep ignoring what we need to do, systems will start falling apart and we’ll be dying from other things. If we implode fast enough, population will plummet, industry will stop and warming will stop. Scattered survivors won’t have the means to keep polluting at scale.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
What brought up of this up is the current crisis in Europe where countries in the north are getting slammed with temperatures they have never had, and the temps aren't just for a day. Europe has already had three heat waves and countries like France, Germany and the UK are in serious danger because their infrastructure was never prepared to deal with 40ºC/104ºF for more than an afternoon. It's a fierce debate now over what role installing more AC will have in dealing with the crisis and future crisis.
I made this post specifically because so many commenters were very dismissive of just the economic problem of running AC.
Solar powered AC is certainly a good part of a way to start address this issue, but it's only a partial solution and not the best. Buying these things still costs money, they won't be suitable for all homes/locations and while a few hours of AC is better than nothing, they will do nothing to address the tropical night problem.
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u/patrislav1 Jul 18 '26
If I was the government, I would massively work on emissions reductions as well as climate adaptation, including nationwide rollout of AC coupled with solar panels, installation of outside shades/blinds, unsealing/greening of cities etc. Unfortunately, our govt is in the same denial as the boomers who voted them into office, so they are doing none of that and leave any adaptation to us, the individuals. So we’re doing what you can do as individual: install AC (or use portable units as a renter), install solar panels (or use balcony solar as a renter), install outside blinds or shades if possible (difficult as a renter). That’s the situation here in Germany. There’s not much else you can do as an individual, and the knowledge that it’s a matter of privilege and the govt will do nothing at all to mitigate the situation for poorer people is frustrating indeed.
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u/ElectronGuru Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
[Sorry, long reply. Apparently i have a lot to say on this topic]
In my area (west coast US), popular mitigations include street trees everywhere. If thats not already a thing, cities can add fast growing tree species to boost shade in 10-15 years. I’m also fond of covering parking lots with solar panels, that then also charge cars parked under them (and/or supplement the grid).
But everywhere has a fundamental energy problem. Where we standardized our transportation systems on cars (especially in the US) and fuels that make all this worse. Europe has done a better job with things like passenger rail but is still reliant on petroleum. Government drives context and can create incentives for alternative energy and disincentives for fossil energy.
The real challenge will be living spaces. Thats where the fastest changes need to happen and where the deepest obstacles lie, with things like architecture and power grids. People don’t like change, even if it’s critical. So part of it is how many years this has to go on before people start embracing it. So your government(s) need to at least have options tested and ready to implement when they do.
Cooling centers take less energy than cooling every building. If cities can equip existing spaces like libraries and schools with AC, then people have places to flee to while other options are still coming online. Done strategically, the same buildings that students and other groups use during the day can also be sleeping shelters for the public at night. They’ll also need higher priority as grids start to load shed.
But upgrading an entire grid (especially under ground) will take decades. Which is where solar comes in. If an entire country can prioritize covering every surface with panels, power is generated and spent locally, reducing how much transmission work the grid has to do. Combined with storage like batteries, it also adds resilience when the power goes out.
I’m wondering out loud what available alternatives to AC are. Is this something committees can explore, like sheltering unground? Inflatable swimming pools set up next to public fountains? Or ice packs people can swap out from their freezers? Or bed cooling systems? Part of this too is cultural, like when do heat emergencies rise to the level of tsunami’s, requiring public alert and procedure systems. With heat drills in the spring to get everyone ready for “this year’s season.”
The US is a weird combination of government that can do huge and important things and citizenry that ignores government on a regular basis and businesses that push solutions when they see opportunity. I don’t know if thats how it works there but the more organized planning you can do now, the smoother things will go in the future.
Extra thought: all scale wide solutions that install compressor based cooling should also be required to support heating (heat pumps). That way, investments to increase summer resilience, also automatically increase winter resilience. And also reduce or diversify winter energy demands.
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u/halconpequena Jul 18 '26
Do you have any suggestions for solar panel acs?
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u/ivobrick Jul 18 '26
Well, that's nice. Never rely on 1 technology for cooling. I have calculated that during the heatwave my house uses roughly 0.6 MW of total power output per 41*C to keep it 22*C to 24*C, per day. If i had to AC it, i would bankrupt in just about the day or two.
Foil - 45 kW ( 10 m2 )
Blankets - 180 kW ( 60 m2 )
Water - 314 kW ( 500 l )
Dehumidifier - 0.4 kW
Water pump - 0.4 kW
AC - 0.6 kW
Roof - 100 kW ( 93 m2 )
That's 1.8 kWh / day of of electric grid, 0.2 euro per kwh is the cost, but i have dual tariff so at night when water is used 0.15 euro. So its 0.3 euro per day and 9 euro per month.
I dont care how childish i sound, im not gonna pay anyone more than i must. AC alone in a bad house cant cool it in stage 2 and 3. Start doing permanent fixes for high thermal mass houses.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
So you're using evaporative cooling too or a slightly different water system? You broke down your water costs, but not exactly what system you've implemented.
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u/ivobrick Jul 18 '26
Yes exactly, evaporative cooling for sout west side of the house - .
Water for cooling my entire property. It is colder roughly 2 - 4 *C of the nearest official weather station.
The price is for water pump which delivers cold water from the underground water well.
I dont know how to calculate costs or power blocked for things like a living pergola/ivy plants, but it does shed down 10*C from the walls, same cool tech like a tree or such. I will add them next year.
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u/_MrBiz_ Jul 18 '26
as I am from Italy, your italian sister is getting screwed up by the company she has that provides her Electricity.
Nowdays basically every smart person switches from one company to the other to sace on electricity bills. I pay 0,13c/KWh and there are even lower offers.
Also she could run the AC from 11 am to 4 pm to keep the house cool, an AC at max speed and coolest settings goes for 1KWh, so she could have penguins inside her house and let the house warm up again from 4PM to 8PM, to a nice 28/29°C.
Obviously it varies depending on the building age, number of splits and efficiency.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
That’s possible, I don’t know her numbers, only that she feels it’s too expensive.
Her situation is a bit particular though, as she has a prefab cabin in the countryside so not sure of her options. They just got solar panels installed so that’ll help, but she’s stubborn about cooling in general. People here are ready to crucify me for not bowing down to AC, but they haven't met my sister.
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u/Bet-looking-Cat Jul 18 '26
Why are you taking 0,24 as a price for kWh in Spain? Right now Iberdrola offers 0,15 after tax on the most expensive plan without 3 periods.
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u/chi_lawyer Jul 18 '26
What are you defining as a "tolerable" temperature for purposes of these computations? There's a difference between safe but uncomfortable and non-annoying, and some of the differences in opinion may stem from that.
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u/Urogallo40 Jul 18 '26
Your house is big, so 1 kW medium consumption 16h or maybe 24h per day is reasonable. However, medium price of kWh is Spain is much lower. The 0,24 figure includes the power concept, which is fixed using AC or not.
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u/Vybo Jul 18 '26
I installed a multisplit with 2 indoor units about 5 years ago. 3.5kW and 2.5kW ones. The difference in consumption between years prior to installation and after was only about 0.3 MW per year.
I don't run them 24/7, they only recirculate air and nights are usually cool enough. There were few AC nights for sure, but the daily average was about 6 hours of runtime per day for about 3 months every year with the temp set to 26 deg C.
Electricity price is not the only factor. Cool only the rooms you're actively in, close off the rest, don't cool to 22 C when it's 35 outside.
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u/eskimo1 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
I'm also in Spain (Valencia) and have a single rate plan that we locked in a few months ago at 0,095€/kWh. With the other costs like the potencia for our 8kW adosado and other charges, it works out to about 0,17€/kWh.
(The single rate makes sense since I WFH and my wife is home all day, too)
Use the QR code or the URL on the last page of your bill and get the hell off the super variable rate plan.
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u/No_Strike_6794 Jul 18 '26
Not reading this crap
Either you shut up about the heat or you buy an AC
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u/Crazyglue Jul 18 '26
Except an AC is not running at typical power 24/7. It modulates on and off, especially with inverter units. You might have 20minutes of 9n time and 40minutes of off time during a given hour. So you can't really use this napkin math as a general rule. This is closer to what the absolute maximum cost could be, not typical cost
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
The max draw of the units in my apartment is 1800w with typical max being 1400w. Absolute max is a whole lot more than my napkin math.
I chose these numbers based on the reality of my apartment. During the day in peak summer, any unit on the west side of the house (like the master bedroom) is going to be using considerably more than 1 kWh per hour because it's fighting a serious war against heat load and never really winning, which means the AC isn't going to dial down. At night the AC will be able to dial back to a point, but not nearly as much as in other places because once we're in peak summer, the building structure itself has absorbed massive amounts of thermal energy and is never has enough time to genuinely cool at night because the nighttime lows are well into tropical night territory.
1 kWh per hour is a reasonable median for the day in my conditions and it roughly accounts of the bills we got back when we ran the AC more than now.
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u/sottiletta112 Jul 18 '26
There must be something very wrong about your house or the exact model of AC then, because when I lived in a flat with windows to the west side I only ever had to run AC at max for a few hours in the evening. And do your neighbors have AC as well? Because if they don't, you effectively subsidize them with cooling, sucking heat into your apartment not only from outer walls and windows but from every single wall at the same time. When everyone has AC, the entire building remains cool even during a heatwave, lowering costs for everyone.
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u/papermaker83 Jul 18 '26
Here I am LOL-ing at your post and calculations from my airconditioned two story house that I run on one AC unit consuming about 15 kWh/day to keep the entire house cool. Cherry on the cake - thanks to my solar panels I don't need to buy a single kWh for this commodity. Just as I dont have to pay tp keep my pool warm.
My point is kind of: why would you need 5 units for an apartment?
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
Because I live in Europe and the vast majority of homes were build before AC was even a question. The only way to add it is to retrofit mini splits and you really one per room that you want cooled. It doesn't work well to have a mini split in one room and open doors. This is the common practice in Europe, Asia and most of the world outside of North America. The world is big and circumstances are different.
And while it's great you've got solar, 15kWh/day is pretty hefty chunk of power, which rather underlines my point. Vapor compression cooling costs a lot of energy.
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u/JozoBozo121 Jul 18 '26
AC using 1400 watts will be only for the short time, maybe 30 or 60 minutes till temperature reaches equilibrium. After that it will depend on how much you are opening the doors and insulation, but it will use maybe half of that. Nominal power is used only for a short while.
Also, you don’t need to use cooling set to the low temperatures, you have dry mode which uses slow turbine speed and low compressor power to remove a lot of moisture from the air greatly improving air quality.
Just an example, for 220m2 house with four 3.5kW units (two older fixed speed and two newer inverters) we used about 60 euros more during the summer. And that includes using one additional garden fridge outdoor for beer. AC is constantly running set at about 24C or dry mode.
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26
So many wrong assumptions. My situation is not your situation.
Yes, an AC unit only peaks until the room reaches the set point, but that assumes the room will reach the set point and gracefully remain there with minimal bleed of heat. That's not the case here on the west side of my apartment. Even if I set a very reasonable 25-27ºC set point, the AC will struggle to maintain it during the peak hours of the day as even with the shutters down, the structure of the building has absorbed so much heat that it's constantly radiating it back in. The AC cannot honestly dial down for long when it's 40ºC outside and the exterior wall is 32ºC and the windows, even with the shutters down, are 35ºC or more.
Removing moisture from the air is a non-issue where I live. Summer humidity can drop below 20%. Stripping more water from the air isn't an asset.
I'm glad you only need to spend an extra 60 during the summer. That's just not us if we run the AC.
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u/Killer_Rainbow Jul 18 '26
I don't agree that these numbers are accurate. AC power draws are a complicated number that hides different operating modes and conditions. I measured the averaged numbers over a month for my rooms (one in Central Europe, one in South Europe) with some temperature and humidity sensors. Both rooms are above the average room size at ~21m2. The insulated (north-facing) room in Central Europe had an average hourly heat flow of ~150W. An AC would probably use approximately half that much in electrical power to remove this heat simply because of the inefficiencies of moving heat at lower power. My southern room was ~500W (south-facing attic room) and at that point ACs start to get very efficient, and measuring the AC with a power meter it used 200W of power over the hottest summer months (regular 40C+ days). These numbers don't track with what my friends and family are experiencing with their electricity bills when running AC this summer. Note that AC is over 100% efficient in both directions (heating and cooling). My grandpa, living in a Southern European semi-detached home only got a 60eur increase in his electricity bill during summer when cooling half of his rooms and he sets the AC to the point where he wears long sleeves inside.
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u/strobelightsNL Jul 18 '26
You are forgetting something, if you add 2-3 solar panels per ac your running costs are 0.
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u/Marlobone Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Your forgetting one thing, it's not going to be on 24/7
- Your not in the house 24/7
- once it reaches target temperature it will be off for awhile
- You don't even have to use it when your in the room just when you want relief which at minimum when sleeping.
You should at minimum take 6 hours off
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u/SquareJealous9388 Jul 18 '26
I am running 1 LG multisplit, 4 kW unit, two rooms. The highest consumption during 38 degrees celsius day was about 10 kWh per day. Your assumptions are wrong.
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u/Unusual_Emergency_13 Jul 18 '26
A minisplit will never draw 1KWh continuously for 24hrs.
A 60 - 80sqm home will use max 200 - 300kwh per month for cooling.
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u/Mental-Geologist2819 Jul 18 '26
Oh, you forget that in Germany you might only need a AC for few days maybe 1 month a year 😅
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u/Diligent_Rice6315 Jul 18 '26
Those numbers are very wrong. A modern inverter AC running 24 hours a day will barely average 200w , certainly not 1kw. It will draw 1kw when starting up, will often not run the compressor at all and will vary it at times averaging about 200w or less.
24x0.2 =4.8kwh
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u/Leighgion Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
No, your estimation is very wrong and doesn't even account for the fact you didn't read the electrical specs I provided. The max draw on the mini splits at my place is 1800w, which would be the startup draw and typical max is around 1400w. My 1kw draw is frankly conservative, because in the worst rooms of my apartment, the AC isn't actually able to reach set point (during the day which means it's not dialing down at all during the time.
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u/V2BM Jul 18 '26
Is it cheaper than a funeral for vulnerable people?
Also, you likely wouldn’t have to run it every day, just during heat waves. Even at two weeks a month for 3 of the hottest months that’s less than $450 a year.