Solar Air Conditioner: Misnamed, Questionable Use

The Coolerado is supposedly a solar-powered air conditioner that cools your home or office using only the sun as its power source.

Technically, this is true except for two facts: it's a swamp cooler, not an air conditioner, and it uses water to cool your building, the sun just provides power for the fan and pump.

Right off, this doesn't seem like too much of a stretch, except that swamp coolers are only good in specific climates and conditions. Namely in hot, dry areas, with little ambient moisture. Like Colorado, Utah, and the like. In much of the country, a swamp cooler is nothing more than a glorified fan, since the water cannot cool the air as it must compete with relatively high moisture levels already in the air.

This is the worst "green" technology I've seen released in a while. I believe the term is "greenwashing." Further, the unit uses 4 gallons of water an hour. That's excessive, even for swamp coolers.

I expect that even more of this greenwashing will appear as companies take advantage of two things: sucker consumers and out-of-context statistics.