Testing study on operating behavior and energy consumption of air conditioners in residential buildings in Beijing

In order to understand the behavior and energy consumption characteristics of air conditioners in residential buildings, investigates the operation status and energy consumption of 69 air conditioners of households in a quarter in Beijing by setting one power meter for each air conditioner in the summer of 2011. The results show that the air conditioning energy consumption of households varies from 6 kWh to 596 kWh with the average of 161 kWh. The maximum is 99 times of the minimum. The average energy consumption of the air conditioners is 63 kWh. The average full-load runtime for each air conditioner is about 0.61 h per day. Average energy consumption intensity of air conditioning per floor area is 2.0 kWh/m². The biggest turning-on ratio of air conditioners (TRAC) in the summer is 31.9% and the maximum daily average TRAC is 13.3%. The average TRAC in the summer is 6.0%. The average energy consumption of split air conditioners is rather lower, since most of the air conditioners in the households operate in a short time because most of the users have taken energy saving behaviors to reduce the air conditioning energy consumption. But the differences of air conditioning energy consumption of different households are very large. The air conditioning operating pattern is the most important influencing factor of the energy consumption.