Does an Air conditioner consume more electricity when turned on?

Question

The AC is turned off for about an hour each day at my workplace. I have heard that switching an AC on/off would be counter productive in terms of saving energy. is this true?

Answer 1

During normal running the outside heat goes on entering the room and the air conditioner continuously pumps the heat out. When the air conditioner is switched off, the entry of heat continues but exit is stoppedSo the temperature of room will rise. But how long??? So far as difference of temperature between inside the room and outside remains. In fact as the temperature inside the room approaches the outside temperature, the heat flow from outside to the inside of room decreases and reaches equilibrium.

Coming to the question now. (1) The air conditioner motor takes high current to start. However this is transient and may compensate to the most of about 1 minute of switching off.

(2) As discussed above, if the temperature of room is low, when the air conditioner is on, the inflow of heat is high, due to higher temperature difference. When the air conditioner is switched off, the inflow of heat also reduces slowly. Therefore, this method WILL save some energy.

(3) However, this is not the best way ...........
Increasing the thermostat temperature by 2 degrees during the normal running will reduce the energy consumption to about 40%. So, increasing the thermostat temperature by about 1 - 1.5 degrees will not make air conditioning uncomfortable and will be much more effective in energy saving instead.

I would recommend not to switch off the air conditioner for one hour, instead increase the thermostat temperature by 1 - 1.5 degrees for better productivity and also to save more energy....

has this been answered to your satisfaction?

Answer 2

Yes, they draw more current when starting initially. And switching off an AC may make the room warmer and may need it running for more time to bring the temperature down again. Whether one hour makes a difference in energy consumption remains to be verified.