this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Heat is a form of energy right? So if we take away the energy from the Air we have concentrated some heat elswhere which we should be able to harvest? So i ask myself why are Air conditioners not a source of energy?

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[โ€“] klangcola@reddthat.com 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The point is that the heat isn't accumulated, it is dispersed. To the outside environment generally.

Harvesting excess heat from AC might be possible, but only on an industrial scale. The temperature difference is so small it's hard to make it do useful work.

In general, heat is a "high entropy" energy (high disorder), it is hard to convert heat energy to useful work. When doing any kind of work (converting energy from one form to another) there are heat losses.

[โ€“] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Really interesting to think of it this way. High disorder/entropy = hard to put it to work.