Coolerado Corp, based in Denver, Colorado, has been announced as the winner of the UC Davis Western Cooling Challenge for 2009. The UC Davis challenge was originally designed to aid manufacturers in making better, more energy efficient dehumidifiers and commercial retailers to get new information about the units.

Coolerado, the winner of this years challenge, won the competition with their H-80, five ton, commercial rooftop air conditioning unit after tests were undertaken by government officials. The tests found that the five ton unit uses less than half the energy used by a normal air con unit.

The test were done at the HVAC Lab at the US Government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the results came as a surprise to many people. Mark Modera, the UC Davis challenge director, originally thought that the rooftop cooling unit would only use 40% less energy, he was wrong. However, the results of the tests found that the massive unit actually uses 80% less power than conventional units.

The Coolerado H-80 rooftop cooling unit has been designed for use on commercial buildings such as shops and office blocks. Each unit has the ability to cool anywhere between 1,500 and 3,000 square feet, certainly alot more than a simple ceiling fan.

No doubt with the annoucement of an energy saving air con unit, many companies will be looking to improve their green image by buying one of these units. Air con and air purifier units and they are normally considered to be a luxury, for that reason they are considered to be extremely bad in the eyes of environmental campaigners. Now that it’s been announced that the H-80 uses 80% less energy, it will become very popular with both companies and customers. Although I suspect many customers don’t really consider what’s keeping the store cool and refreshing.

Although these tests have proven to be good news for the industry, we could soon see more good news as a result of these tests. There have been a number of other companies that will be submitting their air con units for testing later this year. Whether any will beat the H-80 is unknown.