Ten tips in order to save in air conditioner

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With the arrival of summer and winter season it also begins the air conditioner or heat pump season. Every time more and more homes choose an air conditioner as a way to keep their places the best confort due to simplicity and ease of installation and versatility this kind of units have and domestic economy, for this is the most effective and cheapest way to enjoy summers and winters more softened in our homes.

Thanks to inverter technology and equipments with A+ energy efficiency and above we have seen from some years ago how air conditioners consumption has been gradually decreasing. Likewise, and not being this less true, we have seen how energy price in our homes has exceedingly increased so that, and even the real consumption has decreased to a large extent (in some cases more than 50%), it hasn’t been this way the electric bill due to the raise of this last one.

The price of electricity has more than duplicated in many countries in the last ten years.

So it’s a vital importance to our economy and the planet’s well-being trying to reduce to maximum our electric consumption. In this respect the air conditioner consumption of our homes is an essential part at our end of the month consumption, because it is without a doubt the equipment which consumes the most of the whole house in winter and summer months, arriving to represent the 70% of all electric consumption of the whole house during these months.

And now we are going to see some tricks and advices in order to save electric consumption with the air conditioner, beginning from the very moment when we buy it and install it to the maintenance of itself.

How to save energy with the air conditioner?

Air conditioner energy efficiency: The first and principal thing in order to not consume much electricity using the air conditioner is that we should choose always units which are more energy efficient, so when we buy our air conditioner we have to choose always inverter units and with the best energy efficiency, A+ from now on (A+++ preferably), due to though they are more expensive units they will be later more economic than those with less efficiency (saving to 40-60% compared with common units).
Power: We should choose always the needed power for our air conditioning equipment. We mustn’t install neither units with more power than the required nor those which have less than the required one. To calculate the needed power you can use our frigory calculator.
Air conditioner installation: A bad location of the internal unit and also of the external one can cause a higher consumption. Trust in a professional and let him advise you when you install your air conditioning equipment.
Set point temperature: A very common mistake and which raises a lot the electric consumption of air conditioner is to adjust a set point temperature very high in winter and very low in summer. The ideal temperature in our homes in summer is between 24 and 27ºC and between 20 and 23ºC in winter, for every degree that we raise or low we can consume to 8% more of energy.
Insulation: A bad insulation in our homes or offices can cause a huge loss of efficiency, we have to try to keep the best insulation. The simple fact of closing windows and doors or lowering blinds or closing curtains can be enough mesure in order to decrease our electric consumption.
Dirty filters: A dirty air conditioner filters can’t only cause breakdowns on the unit, but they can also affect in a negative way on our air conditioner energy consumption. It’s very important to keep clean air conditioner filters to avoid problems and save energy.
Clean fan and internal heat exchanger: For the same reason we have to maintain clean air filters, we have to do the same thing with fan and internal heat exchanger. Cleaning these two compounds is something more complicated than cleaning filters but it’s something advisable to do it every few years in order to keep our air conditioning properly and avoid working problems, healthy ones and of course, an unnecesary electric consumption. In order to clean these compounds it’s advisable to call a technician.
Clean fan and external heat exchanger: The external unit, that great forgotten of our air conditioner equipments has a lot to say too, a very dirty external unit or with few ventilation can cause electric consumption to raise a lot. We have to, in the same way, clean our unit every few years in order to keep it in the best possible conditions.
Natural ventilation: Use natural ventilation any time it’s possible to use it, in many ocassions the simple fact of opening windows can solve our heat problems in some determined hours of the day, specially in the morning and at night.
Eco mode: If our equipment has an Eco mode this will help us to reduce our consumption to 30%. Use it.