Air Conditioning: Power Consumption and Energy Efficiency

Air conditioning:
At Abu Dhabi, temperature is quite a complicated factor that keeps on changing over months.
At the month of August, the temperature will be around 36°C (96° F), which is said to be the
hottest month. On the other hand, the coldest month is said to be January that has a fall on
temperature down to 18°C (64°F). A fair amount of electricity could be wasted if we run the Air
conditioner on the whole day (Blanco, 2009). It is necessary to switch off the thermostat if the
room is about to be empty. There arises a question regarding the consumption of high amount
of electricity by Air conditioner. The answer could be known once we know the working of Air
conditioner. They are similar to refrigerator but the Air conditioner has to cool the entire
ambience inside the building. A series of tube will be found in the Air conditioning system that
winds as a two different coils, which is known as the evaporator and the condenser coils. The
refrigerant is moved continuously between the evaporator and the condenser with the help of
the compressor. The refrigerant is evaporated in the evaporator coils that take heat out of the
room. In turn a gas, the refrigerant is pumped back to the compressor that is converted to a
liquid and expels the heat. Sufficiently the warm air from the room is moved to the Air
conditioner and fills the cool air.
This whole process consumes a lot of power. More the cooling temperature more the power
will be consumed. It is true due to this reason that the power is consumed more by Air
conditioner during the summer. Compressor does not run in Air Conditioner continuously when
the equipment has a thermostat and a temperature setting and once the ambient temperature
is reached to the set limit, then the compressor shuts off followed by the functioning of the
circulating fans (Branker, Pathak & Pearce, 2011). In this case, the power consumption will be
very less that could be equal to a ceiling fan. Under extreme load condition i.e. when the
temperature increases in the room the power consumption will be at the higher rate.
The Energy Efficiency Ration (EER) is calculated by,
EER = Cooling capacity of AC/ Power consumed by AC
Each air conditioner consumes power based on the star rating. Suppose if we assume an AC to
have 3 star rated then its EER is said to be 2.7. The cooling capacity of 1 ton AC is equal to 3.517
KW of power. For 4 ton AC that is commonly used in the educational campus the AC power
consumption is given as,
AC power consumption = Cooling Capacity/ EER = 4*3.517 / 2.7 = 5.2103 KW
AC is composed of two units: 1) Indoor unit and 2) outdoor unit. The indoor unit is called the
evaporator and the outdoor unit is called the compressor. The power consumed by the outdoor
unit is relatively high when compared to the indoor unit. So we could neglect the evaporator for