The Union Ministry for Power has said that the Star Labelling Program of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) has improved energy efficiency for all types of air-conditioners (ACs).

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Data from BEE suggests that while energy efficiency rose from 43 percent for 1-star to 61 percent for the 5-star level among split ACs, it increased from 17 percent for 1-star to 13 percent for 5-star level among window ACs.

While Power Secretary Alok Kumar said that the star labelling program is achieving its intended outcome, BEE's Director General Abhay Bakre said that the government is committed to successfully implement the ICAP (India Cooling Action Plan).

The market share of energy efficient inverter-based RACs (room air-conditioners) has also risen from 1 percent to 77 percent in the past 8 years. In June 2015, the market share of variable speed (commonly known as inverter) RACs was less than 1 percent in the overall RAC market size of 4.7 million units, when BEE had introduced a voluntary labelling program for Inverter RACs with a new star rating methodology called Indian Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (ISEER), which was made mandatory January 2018 onwards.

From FY 2015-16 to FY 2022-23, the market share of the efficient inverter RACs rose from 1 percent to 99 percent, and the market size of the fixed speed RACs shrunk from 99 percent to 23 percent even as the overall market for RACs reached 6.6 million units by 2020-21.

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While BEE has been revising the star rating plans for split and window RACs to increase the stringency of the energy performance thresholds, the extent of efficiency improvements for the split-type RACs have seen frequent and substantial revisions compared to window RACs due to technological and size constraints.

Launched in 2006 as a voluntary initiative, the Star Labelling program for fixed-speed RACs became mandatory in 2009, followed by biennial revision of energy performance thresholds (Minimum Energy Performance Standard-MEP) for RACs by the BEE till 2018. BEE's voluntary labelling program for inverter RACs launched in 2015 also became mandatory in January 2018.

The efficiency of an RAC is defined in terms of the Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER), which is the ratio of the cooling output to the total power input at standard rating conditions, which implies a rise in efficiency for an RAC with a rise in EER.

In 2018, BEE adopted an improved rating methodology that factors in variance in temperature across the various climatic zones of India and operating hours, with the new metric of Indian Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (ISEER) defined by the ratio of the cooling seasonal total load (in kWh) to the cooling seasonal energy consumption (in kWh).

Image 1: Improvement in 1 Star and 5 Star for Window and Split ACs

Image 2: Market Transformation of Fixed speed and Variable Speed RAC

Image 3: Improvement in 1 Star and 5 Star for Split ACs

First Published:May 10, 2023 5:37 PM IST