Do you use Economy mode on your air conditioner?

Home Improvement
46

I would think as it is an inverter type AC that it would step down it’s operational power usage once a set temp had been achieved, indeed this is as they are designed to do. This would not need anything being manually chosen to reduce it’s energy usage. It might give some sense of ‘saving energy’ but in reality it would likely be something the unit was already doing automagically ( :wink: automatically).

It would be interesting to see if indeed the choice was a needful one or just a clever selling point, I think it is just a clever selling point. For the smaller capacity unit the minimum is 890 Watts according to the spec sheet max for both heating and cooling capacity and a max of 4,040 for cooling capacity and 6,000 for heating capacity. For the larger capacity unit the minimum is 900 Watts and max is 8,650 Watts for cooling and 11,400 Watts for heating. So I would think a lot of steps between those levels. Noting max is the rated level plus the short term boost, designed so that inverters can achieve higher capacity for short periods (+~50% of rated capacity) to bring temps into line when first running.

Some units of course are under sized to the room/area and may be in continual boost and recovery mode, with these choosing a ‘saving level’ will not be of any benefit other than saving energy without achieving room comfort.

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47

I don’t have enough information about the LG Active Energy Control feature to comment on exactly how it works or performs. Their literature states that the efficiency at different energy levels has been tested as per the Australian standard. I think it is an interesting and nice feature to have, especially if you have quite variable cooling and heating loads for the room (i.e the number of people, or perhaps opening up doors to other living areas). However, if the air conditioner’s capacity has been correctly sized for the room, then I’d think the inverter itself should usually be enough take care of varying the output to the right level.

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48

From a Daikin manual

ECONO operation enables efficient operation by limiting the maximum power
consumption. This function is useful to prevent the circuit breaker from tripping when the unit
operates alongside other appliances on the same circuit.

I’ll punt with @grahroll the feature just limits it to a particular power level regardless if the temperature warms so the inverter would step up if left to its regular programming.

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49

Dry mode will cause water to condense inside the unit, so not surprised it needs cleaning so often.
Better to dry using fan mode after using cool or heat mode - it’s automatic with some units.