ACs are still considered luxury appliances. Many people are still scared of buying an AC as they feel ACs will shoot up their electricity bill.
Many people are confused about what the Ideal Air Conditioner Temperature that will yield the maximum power savings as a lot of AC power consumption depends on the temperature you set on the AC.
Before we learn about the ideal temperature setting, we need to understand the basic working principle of an AC.
How Does An AC Work?
For an AC to cool your room or your refrigerator, it needs a substance called Refrigerant. It flows through different parts of your air conditioner and takes away the heat.
The process of conditioning the air is a cycle. What that means is that the flow of refrigerant is continuous until you stop it.
If you want to know more about what refrigerants are and what refrigerants are used in air conditioners, I suggest you read the below article and then come back to this article.
Must Read: What Is Refrigerant. What are the types of refrigerants?
There are mainly four main processes involved in a refrigeration cycle
- Evaporation
- Compression
- Condensation
- Expansion
Evaporation
During evaporation, the refrigerant absorbs the heat from the room. While entering the evaporator, the refrigerant will be in a liquid state. But after absorbing the heat, it converts itself into a low-pressure gas.
Compression
After the evaporator, the refrigerant will get into the compressor. When the refrigerant gets into the compressor, it will be gaseous. The temperature of the refrigerant will be high, and the pressure will be relatively low.
The compressor increases the pressure and temperature of the refrigerant by using a compressor motor. That motor can be a non-inverter motor or an Inverter motor.
Condensation
The high-pressure and high-temperature refrigerant gas then enters the condenser. You might have seen those black zigzag-shaped pipes at the back of the refrigerator. Right? Those are called condenser pipes.
In the condenser, the hot refrigerant gas dissipates heat into the atmosphere. Air conditioners use a fan for the force condensation instead of natural air. It is, therefore, preferable to keep the outdoor AC unit in such an area where sufficient airflow is available.
The condenser pipes are usually made of either aluminum or copper. Copper is the best material for cooling efficiency.
Expansion
Every air conditioner has an expansion tube that reduces the pressure of the liquid refrigerant coming out of the condenser. The low-pressure, low-temperature refrigerant liquid enters the evaporation, and the cycles continue like that.
So this cycle continues like that until the room temperature goes below what you set. A thermostat detects if the temperature you set has been reached or not. After that, the compressor gets shut down for some time. Again, It starts when the temperature goes up.
This is how a refrigeration cycle works in both air conditioners and refrigerators. The only difference is that in the refrigerator, the cycle cools a small space, but it cools a room in the case of the air conditioner.
So, it is clear that a compressor plays a big role in an AC. Conventional single-speed compressors always run at full speed whereas inverter compressors adjust the speed based on the load. It is therefore advised to buy an inverter AC for the maximum power savings.
Ideal Air Conditioner Temperature
The human body can feel comfortable at 24°C. So ideally you should keep the AC temperature at 24°C or below. However, that does not ensure the maximum power savings.
AC power consumption purely depends on the work done by the AC compressor. When there is a high-temperature difference, the AC compressor will have to do more work and thus consume more power.
For example, if the outside temperature is 27°C and you keep the AC temperature at 24°C, the AC will consume much less power. However, if the outside temperature is 50°C and you keep the AC temperature at 24°C, then it will consume a good amount of power.
So, there is no ideal air conditioner temperature. It all depends on the outside temperature. If the outside temperature is higher, your AC will consume more power.
Many people feel that if they keep the thermostat setting too low, the AC will consume less power. It’s a completely wrong concept as the thermostat has nothing to do with AC power consumption. All it does is shut down the compressor when the desired temperature is reached.
