Energy savings


The KaRo system uses at least 50% less energy than a conventional air conditioning system (see comparison, pdf file).

There are several factors that are key to the KaRo system:

First, when heating, more than 70% of the heat transfer from a KaRo ceiling to other surfaces or to people in the room is done by radiation. Conversely, when cooling the heat from objects or people will be radiated upwards to the cool KaRo ceiling, without consuming energy, and like a radiator taken out of the room. This minimizes the energy consumption to cool or heat the air inside the room and avoids big air motion inside the room. This is the first and important savings by not having air to cool and heat a room.

Film on radiation Heating
 
Radiation directly from the ceiling to the people
 
The system is self regulated, depending on the number of people inside the room. 50% of the human energy is dissipated by radiation, if the room is empty no heat transfer happens but as soon as a group of people enters the room the heat transfer between the 37°C (99°F) of the body and the 17°C (63°F) of the ceiling starts with 20°C (36°F) delta T of temperature giving a fantastic sensation of cooling and comfort. The exchange starts immediately.

 
Activation of the system when entering the room
 

Finally, water is a better heating and cooling agent than air, which would require a much larger volume to transport (1000 times more) the same amount of heating and cooling capacity. The small diameter of the tubes also provides a better homogeneity and a higher thermal efficiency. In fact, this efficiency is 98%, where 100% would correspond to an homogeneous net of water. This proves that even in this ideal (and technically impossible) case the mat performances could only be improved by 2 %.
 
Better efficiency with smaller tubes
 

In today's world, everyone knows that energy savings is a problem to consider, and is likely to be even more true in tomorrow's world. Many international newspapers already discussed this question, and acknowledge the good performances of KaRo systems in this domain.

See press articles