Air Conditioning in the Winter?

Whoever heard of air conditioning in the winter?  It’s cold outside and you need warm air, not cold to be comfortable, right? That certainly sounds reasonable.  After all, most people are using their furnaces at this time of  the year.  You might not be aware of it but, it is possible to create enough heat enough within an enclosure so as to require cooling instead of heating.  Most homes lose heat at a faster rate than can be replaced by supplemental sources (ovens, televisions, dryers, etc). As a result, some type of heating system has to be implemented in order to keep cold weather at bay.  However, in some office buildings, for example, the number of people and machines can easily produce enough heat to require space cooling in order to keep people comfortable.   Consider for example a 40 watt flourescent light bulb.  For each watt of power, the bulb produces 3.41 BTU/hr or 136.4 BTU/hr/bulb.  Most light fixtures are equipped with four bulbs. So, each fixture produces 545.6 BTU/hr. Imagine an office space equipped with 100 light fixtures. The total heat produced by all of  these fixtures is now at 54, 560 BTU/hr.  In terms of cooling, 1 ton of cooling is equal to 12,000 BTU/hr. The lights will require a cooling capacity of 4.5 tons. This doesn’t sound like  much but, when you start adding in other loads like people and computers, the heat output can be significant.