Air Conditioners are a pain point for most people in our country who are concerned

about their electricity bills. The moment an air conditioner is added to the list of
appliances used in a household, the electricity bills increase significantly. Although it is
difficult to significantly reduce the big impact of an air conditioner on your electricity
bills, but still some of it can be managed by choosing the right technology, doing the
right installation/maintenance/operation and by doing the right insulation of the room
where the air conditioner is used (more details in our articles listed at the end of this
article).

When it comes to technology, there were not many available till sometime back. When
BEE actively started analyzing and labeling the air conditioners, we got some good one
in form of 5 star air conditioners. The latest and the most efficient technology that is
available in market today is the Inverter Technology for air conditioners. Inverter
technology is designed in such a way that it can save 30-50% of electricity (units
consumed) over a regular air conditioner.

How does an air conditioner work?

For most people, air conditioner just throws cool air at the temperature one sets it at.
But does it really work that way? In fact air conditioner during cooling process, takes the
indoor air, cools it by passing it through evaporator and throws it back in the room. It is
quite opposite to how our good old air coolers used to work. Air coolers used to take
outside air, cool it with water and throw it in. But air conditioners just work on internal air.
Along with evaporator air conditioner also has a compressor that compresses the gas
(refrigerant) in the AC to cool it that in turn cools the incoming internal air from the room.

In a regular air conditioner:

The compressor is either off or on. When it is on, it works at full capacity and consumes
full electricity it is designed to consume. When the thermostat reaches the temperature
level set in the AC, the compressor stops and the fan (in AC) continues to operate.
When the thermostat senses that the temperature has increased, the compressor starts
again.

In an Air Conditioner with Inverter Technology:

The inverter technology works like an accelerator in a car. When compressor needs
more power, it gives it more power. When it needs less power, it gives less power. With
this technology, the compressor is always on, but draws less power or more power
depending on the temperature of the incoming air and the level set in the thermostat.
The speed and power of the compressor is adjusted appropriately. This technology was
developed in Japan and is being used there successfully for air conditioners and
refrigerators. This technology is currently available only in split air conditioners.

What is benefit of Inverter Technology?

Every air conditioner is designed for a maximum peak load. So a 1.5ton AC is designed
for a certain size of room and 1 ton for a different size. But not all rooms are of same
size. A regular air conditioner of 1.5ton capacity will always run at peak power
requirement when the compressor is running. An air conditioner with inverter technology
will run continuously but will draw only that much power that is required to keep the
temperature stable at the level desired. So it kind of automatically adjusts its capacity
based on the requirement of the room it is cooling. Thus drawing much less power and
consuming lesser units of electricity.
Although air conditioner with Inverter Technology adjusts its capacity based on the room
requirement, it is very important to install a right sized air conditioner in a room. Please
make sure that you evaluate the room and air conditioner capacity before you make a
purchase. Keep watching for this space as we are in process of creating a comparator

for

electricity

savings

in

various

air

conditioners.

Are Inverter technology air conditioners slow in cooling?

Several people have concerns that Inverter Technology air conditioners do not cool well
or cool slowly. However let us take this image as reference to understand how inverter
AC works:

Non inverter ACs are fixed speed ACs, where as inverter ACs are variable speed ACs.
Non inverter ACs have compressors that go On and Off. Whereas inverter ACs have
compressors that are On all the time. As non inverter ACs are sized for peak summer
heat load, they are over-sized all the other times (in fact most of the time people
oversize even for peak summer season). The drawback of the same is that the AC
Over cools most of the time. So if you set AC at temperature of 25, it will cool it down
to 23 or 22. Now one would question: then what is the use of thermostat? Well the
thermostat (in a non inverter AC) switches off the compressor when the outside
temperature has reached 25. But a lot has happened before that. In an AC, refrigerant
moves from liquid to gas (by taking heat from the room) and then back from gas to liquid
as the compressor compresses it. But if the refrigerant is more and heat in the room is
less (which happens in over sized AC), it does not get enough heat from the room to
convert from liquid to gas and it keeps moving as liquid. Now when the thermostat
detects temperature and switches off the compressor, the refrigerant still remains in
liquid state and thus has capacity to take heat from room to convert to gas. And so it
takes more heat from the room and cools the room below the set temperature.
In comparison, the inverter tech AC changes the flow rate of refrigerant based on the
heat of the room. When heat is less, the flow rate is less, when heat is more, the flow
rate is more. And it does not switch off the compressor ever. It just makes sure that if
temperature setting is 25, it is maintained at that level.

So the difference is: non inverter AC would over cool as shown in the picture. Whereas
inverter AC will cool optimum. And thus one may feel that inverter AC does not cool or is
slow.

Lesser known benefits of Inverter Technology

Regular motors need 3-4 times more current (more than running current) at
startup. So the inverter/generator size needed to run any AC or Refrigerator
increases significantly. But Inverter Technology air conditioners and refrigerators
have variable speed motors that start up gradually needing much lesser current at
startup. Thus the size of inverter/generator required to startup is less. For e.g. A 1.5
ton fixed speed AC that runs at about 10 Amp current may need up to 30 Amp current
at startup and thus a 5 kVA inverter/generator. But an inverter technology Air
Conditioner needs about 6-7 Amp current and not much more at startup and thus a
1.5 kVA or 2 kVA inverter/generator is good enough to support it.

Regular motors have much lower power factor. In commercial and industrial
connections there is penalty for low power factor and rebates for higher power factor.
An inverter technology motor will have power factor close to unity (or 1) which not
only results in lesser electricity consumption but also help get rebates on better
power factor.

If you are planning to use Solar PV for air conditioner, then it is the best to use
inverter technology air conditioner or refrigerator as it not only reduces the size of PV
panels because it consumes lesser electricity, it also reduces the size of inverter to
be put along with the PV panel.

Difference between a BEE 5 star rated and Inverter

Technology Air Conditioner
There is a lot of buzz about inverter technology air conditioners these days. Rising
electricity tariffs are hurting people and most people understand that air conditioners
significantly increase electricity bills. Thus there is a lot of interest for air conditioners
that consume less electricity for same amount of cooling output. On our website we get
a lot of question from people who are looking to buy air conditioners. One of our most
popular section on the website is on Top Ten Air Conditioners and some of the most

common questions on that are: 1) What is the difference between BEE 5 star rated AC
and Inverter Tech AC? 2) I want to buy a 1.5 ton Inverter Tech AC, which one should I
buy? 3) I see high EER for certain ACs (above 10), are they better than others? 4) Are
there windows AC available in the market with inverter technology?

Below is the collection of responses that we have provided to people and we hope it
helps many others

Difference between Inverter Technology AC and BEE 5

star AC:
1.

Inverter technology air conditioners are variable speed/ variable tonnage air
conditioners and thus operationally they are quite different from regular air
conditioners that have single speed compressors and single tonnage.

2.

Inverter technology air conditioners adjust their speed/tonnage depending on

heat load of a room. Whereas regular air conditioners do not.

3.

Every room has a different heat load, even if they are of the same size. The heat
load depends on various factors as we have listed on our article: Things that impact
electricity consumption in air conditioners. To give you an analogy, every human
being is different; even then the waist sizes of most trousers available in the market
are fixed (leaving the ones with elastic). Inverter Technology AC is just like a trouser

with an elastic waist that can adjust to the size. The other benefit is that even if the
waist size increases or decreases, the trouser with elastic will adjust accordingly.
Regular Air Conditioners are fixed size.
4.

Now as we can see that operationally inverter technology air conditioners are
quite different from regular air conditioners, comparing them on efficiency with
regular air conditioners is not easy. Thus none of the inverter technology air
conditioners have been rated on BEE star rating. Only the regular air conditioners
are rated on BEE star rating.

5.

The heat load in a room does not remain constant and it varies from seasons,
varies based on number of people, varies between day and night, varies based on
climate profiles of your location. To take the same analogy we mentioned above, the
waist size increases or decreases with the amount of food one eats or the amount of
exercise one does. So as a trouser with elastic waist can work well, an air conditioner
with inverter tech can work well.

Star rating is a system initiated by BEE (Bureau of Energy Efficiency) India to determine the
energy efficiency of an electronic product for home use like window and split airconditioners.
Depending on their energy efficiency they are rated on a scale of 1 5 and indicated by
starts for easy understanding. Higher the number of stars, better is the energy efficiency of
an air conditioner.

AC Star rating Calculation

The energy efficiency of an AC depends on two factors: Cooling capacity (in BTU) and Power
consumption (in Watts)
The cooling capacity of one ton AC should be 12000 BTU, 1.5 ton AC 18000 BTU. Some
companies rate their air conditioners as 1 ton but actually their cooling capacity is less than
12000 BTU. SO the BEE has brought into force star rating system so that the manufacturers
cannot misguide the consumers

What to check befor buying air conditioner

While buying air conditioner check the following on the specifications: Cooling capacity in
BTU, power consumed in Watts and star rating if available.

Star rating is based upon the EER of an AC. EER is cooling capacity divided by power
consumed. To calculate EER in watts BTU needs to be converted into watts. 12000 BTU is
equal to 3517 watts or 1BTU = 0.2937 Watts or one ton = 3517 watts
While it is important to choose an AC with higher star rating, it is equally important not to
compromise on the cooling capacity, which is the primary function of an AC.

BEE air conditioner Star Ratings

The star rating parameters EER shall be obtained from following tables depending on the
year of manufacturing/import/assembling of an air conditioner
Air conditioner Manufactured / Imported / Assembled From 07 January 2010 to 31
December 2011
Star Rating

Min

Max

1 Star *

2.30

2.49

2 Star **

2.50

2.69

3 Star ***

2.70

2.89

4 Star ****

2.90

3.09

5 Star *****

3.10

Air conditioner Manufactured / Imported / Assembled From 01 January 2012 to 31

December 2013
Star Rating

Min

Max

1 Star *

2.50

2.69

2 Star **

2.70

2.89

3 Star ***

2.90

3.09

4 Star ****

3.10

3.29

5 Star *****

3.30

Air conditioner Manufactured / Imported / Assembled From From 01 January 2014 to 31

December 2015

Star Rating

Min

Max

1 Star *

2.70

2.89

2 Star **

2.90

3.09

3 Star ***

3.10

3.29

4 Star ****

3.30

3.49

5 Star *****

3.50