RetireJapan wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 7:49 am
MIght be worth considering a humidifier: more humidity makes it feel much warmer, boosting the AC power. I find a huge difference between just running AC and running a powerful humidifier with the AC.
Unfortunately it has the opposite effect. While it indeed feels warmer with the same room temperature (dry bulb temperature) when it's more humid, the problem is that the humidifier evaporizes water and that takes *lots* of energy. Your AC will have to work way harder to keep the room temperature the same, costing more money in the end.
In general, first you should look into what consumes how much energy. You can only save so much energy and at some point it's a waste of (mental) energy that is better put into other things (like improving at job salary negotiations).
So, I recommend to get some devices to measure energy consumtion over time. Then find the big chunks and try to cut them. E.g. if you find that your computer or TV use up a lot of energy even during standby, find a way to turn them off completely instead.
The AC will probably be the biggest chunk and there are 3 things to know here:
1.) More modern ACs will save energy. Unfortuntely, in Japan it's quite hard to find out the exact and truthful numbers. If you rent, you can't do too much anyways
2.) Smaller ACs (less power) will save energy over bigger ACs in general (same brand / line). Single-split ACs will save energy over multi-split ACs. The drawback of small ACs is that they might be insufficient if it gets really hot or really cold. But mostly people vastly overestimate how much power they need.
3.) During summer, use the dry-mode. It also cools (it has to physically) unless you have a reeaaally old model. This is usually more than enough to keep your from feeling hot/sweating, except maybe for the nighttime or if your building is really bad insulated. Then, in summer, close and seal off all those air vents in the wall. Instead, air out in the morning and evening. You can do the same in the winter, but you'll have to air out carefully to avoid mold.
And last, one of the most important things, that almost no one seems to know: ACs are heatpumps. They literally pump heat from the inside to the outside or the other way around. Their efficiency depends on their workload and on the difference between the two temperatures. ACs like it best when they run continously without having to work hard. It seems weird, but an AC running 24h on 30% power will consume *less* energy than an AC that runs every 4h for 1h (so 6h per day in total) on 100%.
It depends a bit on the conditions. The worse your insulation, the better it is to actually not use the AC too much. But it's still best to not turn it off but rather reduce the temperature and then turn it up slowly over time (if you can program a timer with multiple steps, increase it by 1degree at a time).
People do things like "turn on AC in the morning for 1h, turn it off when going to work, turn it on when coming back for 1h, then turn it off again to go drink with friends and turn it on for 1h and then turn it off to go to bed". This will cost you more energy and money than just keeping it on over the whole 24h, unless you have building from 1970s or so.
Hope that helps you to reduce your energy costs a bit.
