Can we talk about Swamp Coolers here?

[jimj]

Commercial kitchen makeup air is often passed through a swamp cooler, even in humid environments. Better than nothing, since conventional AC is impractical for that much air volume.

If Evaporative Cooling (EC) replaced AC in all the cities and towns where it works well, this country would literally never need to build a new power plant. That's because all of our plants are severely underutilized except for a couple weeks in the height of summer when AC units are running full tilt. EC where effective would shave that peak demand, and brownouts would cease until we get enough photovoltaic and wind generation capacity installed. Then we can start decomissioning the coal plants, and voila, EC has solved global warming!

Got news for ya, Tucson Electric did a study a number of years ago and found in Arizona ( you could say its kinda dry here ) a 12 SEER will match the efficiency of an EC.