The Cost Benefits of Air Conditioning
The cost savings of using an Air Conditioning Unit can clearly be seen when operating in heating mode. These are offset to a degree by using the unit in cooling mode, but when combined the system uses less than a third of the energy of conventional methods. We're talking about saving around £360 on heating per classroom, every year. Read on to find out more.
What does it cost?
Of course, the savings are even bigger if the unit is never used in cooling mode, and some schools do indeed do this. However, we think the benefits outweigh the relatively small offset in energy. See why here.
Energy costs are spiralling out of control, and no-one can predict where this will all end… but the higher the costs get, the bigger the cash difference will become.
So what’s the cost of running an Air Conditioning unit to heat a classroom?
Almost all classrooms can be effectively served by a 7kW unit.
We judge that an Air Con unit will be used in heating mode for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and for 21 weeks a year… that’s 840 hours. To produce 7 kW of heating, an AC unit will use about 2.3kW of electricity: but there’s more to it than that.
What does it save?
Using Inverter technology, the compressor (which is the part that uses most of the elctricity) only runs when absolutely necessary, allowing the system to heat or cool for periods without the compressor running.
This means that the system runs at:
100% for 12% of the time
75% for 32% of the time
50% for 36% of the time
25% for 20% of the time
This boils down to 1016 kw hours for 840 hours of 7kW heating… and that’s a bargain!
If we work this out at a cost of £0.28 per kWh (which, we’re afraid, will soon be double), then it would cost £284 to heat a classroom for a year, which is a small fraction of achieving this with gas, oil or electricity.
Find out about the educational and environmental benefits below.