Cooling a room is expensive
A split aircon cools a room, but the running cost is very high in most buildings. A room air conditioner uses almost all the power to cool the floor, walls, ceiling, windows and furniture. Most of the money spent on electricity cools materials that don’t need cooling!
A split air conditioner for a smaller room will consume about 1,000 Watts electricity on average, up to 2,400 Watts for a large room in humid summer heat. The least you can expect to pay is $1,700 – $3,000 to have one installed. Now add $120 – $220 monthly for the electricity to run it for three summer months. That’s with average electricity tariff at $0.35. In some cities the electricity bill will be 50% more than that. You’ll pay $4,000 – $5,600 in just the first three years.
Split ACs cannot be moved, Therefore, you need on for every room where cooling is needed. Even if you have solar panels on the roof, the electricity is not free, especially at night. Experts estimate that the cost of electricity stored in batteries is around 30 – 35 cents per unit, taking the estimated life of lithium batteries and the replacement cost into account. Modern buildings incorporate high quality insulation and draft sealing to minimize the energy used for cooling and heating. These buildings need expensive air filtration machinery to ensure sufficient ventilation without compromising energy efficiency, adding more to the installation, operating and maintenance cost.
