> Over the lifetime of an air conditioner, the cost of the energy used to run the equipment will be larger than the cost of the equipment itself
My point is this is rapidly becoming not true.
Thanks for the info on the efficiency though. I’m still hoping we can figure something out. If not , we should switch to propane for the coolant. Way cheaper than whatever they keep making manufacture switch to.
We are rapidly approaching the point where we have retrofitted all lighting to be LED and all motors to be driven by VFDs, eventually we will reach a point where we’ve maxed out efficiency and new power generation will need to be built, which will push energy costs up.
Propane is cheap but it has a couple drawback. Flammability, and the refrigerant must be pure so no mercaptan can be added which means if there’s a propane leak, nobody will smell it. This is more of a problem for commercial and industrial units than residential.