50c a day: Shock data reveals true cost of running some aircon units

Australia’s leading consumer advocacy group Choice product category household manager Chris Barnes said although the data varied based on different sizes of airconditioners and different running costs, a basic analysis showed the cost of using an airconditioner would be around $2 a day.

A Compare the Market analysis has also showed how much it might cost annually to use different aircondioners window box airconditioners the most expensive to run annually at $1030.40 and the split systems the cheapest at $211.70 annually which equates to 50c a day.

“So for hot place like Brisbane or Queensland generally you can find out what the yearly running cost is expected to be, we are talking about split systems here,” Mr Barnes said.

“You are probably looking at about $1 to $2 a day for running an airconditioner. Now there’s a couple of assumptions here that’s not necessarily 24 hours. So that might only be running for a few hours as you need it.

Mr Barnes said it might not cost as much as you would expect because the airconditioners don’t usually run at full capacity the whole time.

“The units will adjust their outputs depending on how close they are to the target room temperature.

“It means that they’re not usually running at full power, and therefore they’re not actually chewing up as much electricity as they might.

“Which makes them a lot more efficient, efficient to run.”

Mr Barnes said it would be highly unlikely that a typical five kilowatt aircon would run at full blast for 24 hours and if it did it would around $11 to $20.

“but that will almost never happen,” he said.

“In fact, you’d have to set it up in a laboratory to make it do that. In real life, it will never actually run the full blast for 24 hours, simply because at some point it will have cooled the room down to wherever you wanted it and then it will dial itself down.

“So unless you’ve got an incredibly hothouse and it’s really inefficient, all the doors are open and you don’t have any insulation.”

Compare the Market’s Chris Ford said while window box airconditioners were outdated they were still common in many homes and have a lower energy star rating.

“Our analysis shows that reverse split systems will give you more bang for your buck if you’re in the market for a new air conditioner,” Mr Ford said.

“Even a larger unit came in at a lower price than ducted airconditioning. Keep in mind that our research only looked at the price of running one unit and that may not be sufficient if you live in a larger home.”

Originally published as Cost of running aircon as little as 50 cents a day with certain units, new data shows