Pairing fans, air conditioning saves energy while keeping offices cool

CITRIS and the Banatao Institute Creating information technology solutions for society's most pressing challenges An alliance between UC Berkeley researchers and academic and industry partners in Singapore has demonstrated that combining ceiling fans with higher air conditioning set points can lower energy use by one-third - without sacrificing occupant comfort. In Singapore, an island city-state just one degree north of the equator in Southeast Asia, where the weather is hot and humid year-round, air conditioning (AC) has been called the " unspoken energy guzzler." According to sustainable development and policy specialist Kavickumar Muruganathan, household and building AC usage accounts for nearly 20 percent of the country's carbon emissions. Given Singapore's status as one of the most urbanized and densely populated countries in the world, a considerable number of those air conditioning systems are located in commercial properties, such as office buildings. Investigators at the Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS), a research-focused nonprofit company established in Singapore by the University of California, Berkeley, have worked with industry partners in Singapore to successfully pilot a cooling solution for office buildings in tropical climates that offers an impressive energy savings of more than 30 percent without reducing occupant comfort. Their technique pairs air conditioners, set to a temperature slightly higher than standard, and ceiling fans, which require much less energy to operate, in a method known as hybrid cooling.