It is truly ironic that air-cooled refrigeration and air conditioning systems perform at their worst, when they are needed the most. The same system that produces 95 tons of cooling when the ambient temperature is 85°F, produces just 82 tons of cooling when the temperature is 115°, which is a 14 percent reduction in capacity.
Over that same temperature range, the system's power draw increases by 31 percent from 97 kW to 127 kW, while its efficiency decreases by 53 percent kW/ton of cooling from 1.01 to 1.55.