Have you ever noticed the air conditioner in your room or in your office ? If you had used the air conditioner 10 years ago you must be aware that those ACs used to consume a lot of electricity. But today air conditioners have becomes highly efficient.  These are not only in terms of electricity consumption but also in terms of performance. How did that happen, ever thought ? No, do not worry we will discuss the new implemented technologies in the air conditioners going through this buying guide as follows :

Buying Guide :

1. Star rating – star rating basically tells you how efficient your air conditioner is when compared its performance and energy consumption. Generally more stars means more efficient your device is. But a 5 star rating device 3 years ago might be 3 star device today. This is due to the reason that companies keep upgrading their products every year. So, timing is also something you must keep in mind. These star ratings are given by the government authorities in the respective country.
2. Cooling capacity – cooling capacity is the amount of heat the air conditioner would be able to take out of the room per unit time. Generally the cooling capacity is defined in terms of a term called “Ton”. And 1 ton is around 3.5 Kw that means amount of energy or heat that comes out of room is 3.5 KJ per second. So, it depends on your room or office size what amount of heat it generates and how much you want it to extract it outside of the room or to surroundings. In general, a room of 120-140 square feet will need a 1.5 ton AC to keep the temperature in the range of 18-27 degree centigrade.
3. Windows AC VS Split AC – I believe you must have definitely noticed the kind of air conditioner installed in a particular space.  For example somewhere an air conditioner is at the wall while at other place it is located at a window only. Let me clear the confusion behind this, see there are two types of air conditioner in general. One is windows AC while the other is Split AC. An Split AC comes with two parts or you can say two components. One component is installed in the room while the other is installed outside the room.  On the other hand Windows AC has only one component and is installed at window only. Depending upon your need you can go for any one of them. But split ACs are more efficient compared to window ACs.
4. Electricity consumption – The air conditioner must be as highly energy efficient as possible. The new technology that I was taking about in the beginning is “inverter AC“. The inverter ac runs its compressor according to the need of the room otherwise it keeps that switched off to reduce the electricity consumption. While a non inverter ac has a compressor that runs at constant speed no matter your space needs more cooling or not. So, going for an inverter AC is a wiser decision although it takes more budget but it is energy or money saving in long term.
5. Condenser coiling – Copper coiling is the best choice for air conditioner as it needs low maintenance and makes the device more durable. Copper coiling make your life more convenient as your device would hardly need a maintenance from an electrician. Although alloy coiling and aluminium coiling also exist in the market. But copper is the best and that’s why bit expensive as well.
6. Refrigerant – You should always check the refrigerant that company uses in your air conditioner before buying it. The refrigerant must be Eco-friendly, earlier many companies used refrigerants like R-22 in the air conditioners. But they turned out be disaster for our environment. Because if it leaks out, the chlorine components would have the potential of reacting with a million ozone molecules. This creates ozone hole in the upper surface of the atmosphere. That would enhance the global warming so the governments banned it. Nowadays a very Eco-friendly R-32, a hydrocarbon refrigerant is used in the air conditioners.
7. Noise level – Air conditioners are installed in the room at a wall or at window. It means their one part would be in the room only. So, it becomes very important that its noise level should be as less as possible. Because more noise will not let you sleep in the night. To reduce that noise, engineers in companies started fitting rotary compressor instead of reciprocating compressor. Because these don’t disturb you while sleeping.
8. Manufacturing Brand – Most people look for trusted brand whenever they purchase a new thing from the market. I think this is right in some way because many brands have worked really hard to maintain their credibility and win the trust of the consumers. Not only this, brands have big service networks in all over the globe to serve their customers in most convenient way.  Because in case you face some issue in your product then it would completely depend on the brand what kind of service they provide to their customers. More professional and larger their service network is in the city, better their service will be.
9. Additional features – These were the major multiple features as discussed above. There are some minor things as well that you can consider while purchasing an AC . These features could be dust filter, dehumidifier etc. See, dehumidifier is a good feature that you must consider while purchasing one. Because in summer, the humidity is comparatively more than the comfort level. So, a dehumidifier becomes a need. If your air conditioner has a dehumidifier in it, it would be very good.

Global warming issue :

A few people think we harm our environment using air conditioner since increase the earth temperature. But that’s not true, I do accept this fact that air conditioners enhance the potential of global warming. But it is negligible when compared to the warming potential that coal based power plants have. Coal based power plants are much more responsible to global warming. Because the emission of harmful gases like sulphur dioxide (SO2) and hydrogen sulphide (H2S) have more potential of heat retention on the earth. So, it would be better if we change our ways of electricity generation. In other words, we must upgrade our ways of power generation.

There are multiple renewable sources of energy that we can think of and big organizations are working toward them. Some renewable sources of energy are solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, tidal and ocean energy etc. But the problem is these renewable sources of energy are not reliable enough since they are not in our control. They are in control of mother nature only till now. So a better way could be to shift to the nuclear power. Nuclear power generation is far better way to generate power and not harm the earth that could happen due to heat retention. United States of America has already shifted more than 30 percent of their power generation on nuclear based power plants. Other nations are also moving towards this direction due to every nation’s responsibility for sustainable development.

Few final words :

I think you are now well aware about the things. Basically specifications in particular that you must look at while purchasing an air conditioner. I hope these will definitely help at some point in your life. Thanks for giving your time, if you want to read more or want some air conditioner suggestions, you can click here.