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Comment by khafra | Hacker News Reader

If power is so cheap mid-day, why don't european buildings have sufficient air conditioning not to kill the elderly during heat waves? The laws restricting AC all have power conservation as their rationale.

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Do old people not have air conditioning because the law prohibits it? I thought it was more that air conditioners are expensive, old people in Europe are often somewhat poor and on fixed incomes, and a lot of historically temperate places in Europe have no tradition of AC.

Certainly a lot of the young wealthy people I know in Europe have AC, even outside of the really hot places.

The death toll per heat wave can easily hit 5 figures in just france. A hybrid portable-minisplit that will cool a 100m^2 apartment is under a thousand euros, and draw just under a Mwh per year. A portable to cool one small bedroom is much less power-efficient, but can often be found between 200 and 300. That's not cheap, per se, but funerals aren't much less expensive in Europe than in America. Many EU countries allow some limited cooling in public buildings, but I still sweat in most grocery stores, malls, libraries, museums, etc. during hot weather--they just don't take air conditioning to a comfortable temperature as worth the power bill, the way America does.

Why are ACs so expensive in Europe? A window AC can be had from Walmart for like $120.

Mini-splits are more complicated than window ACs, they allow the indoor and outdoor components to be separated.

Most European homes don't have the kind of window that you could stick an AC in, the windows hinge rather than sliding up and down. You can get one of those floor units with a hose for probably ~€300 though.

Paris is working on some type of underground cooled-water network for AC in industrial settings.

https://56paris.com/en/cooling-paris-from-below-the-city-s-u...

Yeah, it makes sense to get it and they'll have it eventually. It's a cultural shift as much as anything, it will take time.

The cooler parts of the US (e.g. the PNW) are also gradually increasing AC adoption as things heat up, but 20 years ago it was pretty much unheard of.

It's cultural latency. Europe is the faster warming continent and the buildings were perfectly fit for purpose 30 years ago. Old people lived their entire lives without AC and plainly dislike it.

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