Which is the Most Energy Efficient Ceiling Fan in India? How to Get it?

How much electrical energy you use in a month for your very justified needs? How much money you pay to the electricity utility company per month for your electricity? 

Many of us Indians do understand the importance of saving energy, but we really are very reluctant to do something about it.

Ceiling fans are one of the electrical appliances which have come almost an indispensable in Indian homes and offices. In many middle class Indian homes at least one ceiling fan keep running on an average 20 hours a day for almost 300 days in an year.

Ceiling fans are not normally considered as high energy consuming devices. At least that is the general public perception.

A couple of decades ago, it was common that a ceiling fan with its speed regulator used to consume about 80 to 100 watts of electricity an hour.

With more and more energy efficient designs and with the introduction of electronic speed regulators, the average electrical power consumption of a normal sized ceiling fan has come down in the recent years. The best energy efficient ceiling fans as manufactured by reputed ceiling fan manufacturers now come with a wattage in the range of 45 to 60 watts. Ceiling fans now come with Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) star ratings. A few reputed suppliers have now 5 star rated ceiling fans which is considered as the best with respect to energy efficiency. 

For example a five star rated 1200 mm sweep ceiling fan of a reputed make consumes about 45 watts combined with its electronic speed regulator and costs about Rs. 2000/- per set. Larger fans of higher sweep may consume a few more watts per hour and costs a few hundred rupees more.

I was wondering whether there could be any further improvement in this regard and found that one Indian manufacturer has begun manufacturing and marketing a remarkably super efficient ceiling fan in the Indian market. 

This fan is marketed in the brand name-Superfan. It is manufactured by an innovative technology company located in south India called Versa Drives Private Limited, Coimbatore.

click the images for more details and buying them online

They manufacture many models of their super energy efficient ceiling fans in the superfan brand. You may visit this webpage for the technical details and also buying  these models.

These  models have sweep sizes of 1200 mm and 1400 mm and are all with the highest BEE energy star rating of five.

All these models have a maximum energy consumption ranging from 35 to 38 watts much lower than the best efficient models of other Indian manufacturers. 

Unlike conventional ceiling fans superfan models come in attractive colors. These hi tech fans do not require the regulator and are operated using remote controls. They are provided with very interesting and useful features. 

Suppose that you are using a normal ceiling fan which consumes about 60 watts of electrical energy. Suppose that you use this fan for about just one hour in a day.

That means you will use 60/1000 KW x 1 hr x 30 d = 1.8 KWh or units of electricity per month on account of this one fan used for just one hour a day.

Now a good majority of middle class homes in India have 3 to 4 ceiling fans and their combined use could be anything in the range of 10-20 hour in a day or even higher. That means a monthly electric consumption of 18 to 36 units or more on account of the fans.

Now suppose that you replace these fans by these superfans which consume only about 35 watts instead of the 60 watts of your old fans.

The net saving per fan is 25 watts per hour or about 0.75 units in a month for every hour of daily use of the fan.

If on the average your total daily use is 10 hours, your save 7.5 units. If it is 20 hours, you save 15 units.

The electricity tariff in most Indian cities and states are based on slab system. For example, Kerala used to be a state with lower electricity charges of less than a rupee per unit in the past for the domestic consumers whose consumption was less than 50 units per month. But in the recent years this has become more than double and stands at Rs. 2.8 per unit. For a family which uses over 200 units, the rate of tariff is R.7 per unit. [See this news report] 

In some states and in some cities, the rates are higher and the electricity charges is on an increasing trend. In the national capital Delhi, the rates are much higher. The rising electricity charges have become one of the major political issues there.

There are many other hidden charges as well. The commercial rates are much higher. Due to the slab system and the various hidden charges such as meter rent, installation cost, taxes, etc the actual cost varies from place to place.

Effectively, the average cost per unit (KWh) of electricity come out to be to the tune of 5 to 7 rupees as of now. It would keep rising year after year. 

India is becoming a power starved nation as the gross deficit in energy keep rising every year. Again, electricity production enhances various kinds of environmental hazards.

All these are ample reasons for India to find ways to curtail its energy consumption. Conservation of energy should be one of the prime policies for India.

Suppose you are able to save 15 units of electricity in a month by using super efficient ceiling fans. At Rs.5 per unit, you save Rs.75 in a month or Rs.900/- in an year. [You can calculate the savings and see the difference in this superfan webpage]

Due to superior technology, superfan models are costlier than other normally available ceiling fans in India. One may have to spend about Rs. 3000- 3500 for one superfan model while lesser efficient ceiling fans could be purchased at half the cost.

But these fans are worth that cost the additional cost is paid back within two or three years time. Besides these fans are aesthetically good looking and improves the decor of the home or office.

Suppose that about 5 million homes in Kerala state replace their fans with this new fan and save 15 units of electricity per month. With that kind of a saving, Kerala can immediately divert about 100 MW of electric power for industrial production! It amounts to about 16% of electricity production from the states biggest hydel electricity production facility at Idukki! 

I have just given an indicative energy saving potential by adopting a simple step. Energy saving by replacing the filament type electric bulbs with compact florescent lights (CFL) has given much saving in the past. Now, Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs are revolutionizing it. A 100 W filament bulb is more or less equivalent to a 40 W florescent tube which in turn is equivalent to an 11 W CFL. But an LED bulb of 4-5 W has the potential to reduce even that to half or even lesser. But at the present costs, the capital costs involved in saving one watt of lighting power by replacing CFL with LED comes to about Rs.50 per watt. The difference in price of a 5 W LED bulb and an 11 W CFL is about Rs.250. The LED light is costlier by about Rs.250.

A superfan too would be costlier in the same way as compared to a normal 5star energy efficient fan of equivalent capacity. But the superfan saves 25 W of electricity more than any other 5 star rated ceiling fan in the Indian market now.

Some time ago, superfan models were not very much available with the Indian retailers. 

But now the manufacturers of this fan, it seems, have adopted better marketing actions. Superfans can now be procured online from reputed e-shopping sites such asAmazon!

It is indeed a good thing. 

This is indeed a good independent make-in-India initiative, though established before the present 'Make-in-India' campaign  and needs to be appreciated.

While individual citizens can contribute much for energy saving by taking care of those few watts or kilowatts of power they consume for domestic purposes for fans, lights and other domestic electrical appliances, the potential for energy saving by commercial establishments too is substantial.

Imagine the national and individual savings when our offices install energy efficient fans, lights and air-conditioners in place of the old less efficient electrical equipment!

What is needed is a bit more attention to the details of our energy consumption by doing some energy audit and taking corrective actions.

Remember! Every watt of power saved not only gives financial benefits, but also save our environment from becoming more and more polluted. By using energy efficient electrical appliances and using them judicially, you could even save enough to consider taking another bank loan for some other purpose as your monthly energy saving could be equivalent to another loan EMI!

Our industrial design engineers and entrepreneurs should be encouraged to design and produce energy efficient appliances. 

Government should consider giving incentives for such initiatives.  

Some Technically Wise Considerations For Buying and Installing an AC For Your Home or Office!

This article is for the guidance of those thinking of buying and air conditioner for their home of small one room office located in the cities and town of power deficient India.

Being a very populous country, India needs electric power in huge quantities even when its average domestic consumption is much lower than the developed nations. As per the 2012 data, the average domestic power consumption per year was about 750 units (KWh). This translates into about 3500-4000 units per family on the average per year or about 290-330 units per month per family. Since this is an average value, the higher income families must be consuming much higher as the a good percentage of lower income group families might be consuming zero to 30 units per month. It is also interesting to note the wide disparity of domestic electric power usage across the various regions and states of India.

Electricity requirement for lighting, fans, TV, etc are much less as compared to its requirements for the purpose of water pumping, cooking, air conditioning etc. In reality, those homes which use air conditioners consume much more electricity than those who do not have air conditioners.

Again, air conditioners which are of old designs and wrongly selected draw much more electricity. Hence, it is very essential that air conditioners are selected and used with some care. There is ample scope for reducing your electricity bills if you are a bit careful with regard to your air conditioners.

Most people are not very clear about the working principle of a common air conditioner unit. Any one who is thinking of purchasing and installing an air conditioner for home or small office purpose should try to understand the essential principle of working of an air conditioner.

An air conditioner is essentially used to cool air and remove humidity. Humidity in air is due to the presence of water vapor in air. Normal room air conditioner units also remove micro fine dust particles in air using an air filter. Some air conditioners also have electric heating coils in built which could be used for heating the air in winter time. However, cooling happens to be the primary function of a room air conditioner that we use today.

Cooling in air conditioners take place using the Joule-Thomson effect. When a gas is compressed suddenly (the scientists call it adiabatic compression) it gets heated up to expel the heat which it had. If the compressed hot gas in a pipe or container is kept for some time it cools and some gases even become liquids. When this compressed and cooled gas (which might have become a liquid) is suddenly expanded its temperature goes down much below the surrounding temperature. This cold gas can absorb heat from the surroundings which is at a higher temperature. 

This principle is made use in the air conditioners that we use for our comforts in our homes. An air conditioner essentially has a refrigerant gas ( a gas which is easy to compress and has some other desired qualities) contained within a hermetically sealed system of copper tubes attached to a compressor unit. It also has one or two fans for circulating air externally through the two tube coils kept separately. The principle of working of an air conditioner is shown in the figure below:

The refrigerant now commonly used in domestic air conditioning systems is a chemical substance called Hydro-chloro-fluro-carbon (HCFC) which is commonly now known as R-22. This substance when leaked to the atmosphere causes ozone layer depletion in the atmosphere and hence considered as not so environment friendly. Hence, alternatives are being experimented.

The air conditioner unit has two pipe coils, called the vaporizer and the condenser interconnected using and incoming and out going copper tubes passing through an electric motor operated gas compressor. The coils and pipes are filled with the refrigerant gas such as R-22. When the compressor starts, it continuously compresses the gas coming from the vaporizer coil placed inside the room to be cooled. The gas inside the vaporizer expands and cools and the room air is blown through it by a fan becomes cool. The expanded gas from the vaporizer moves to the compressor to get compressed and the refrigerant gas at the outlet of the compressor becomes hot due to compression . The hot compressed gas then moves to the condenser coil kept outside the room and its heat is dissipated to the air outside from the condenser coil. The compressed thus gets cooled in the condenser coil to become a liquid. The liquid refrigerant moves to a liquid gas separator from which only the liquid refrigerant is sent back to the vaporizer coil to repeat the process.

So long as the compressor keep working the refrigerant takes out the room heat and expel it to the outside through the condenser. The condenser is sometimes called the radiator as it radiates or discharge heat to the outside air. 

In a window air conditioner all these systems are suitably kept inside one packing. The vaporize and the fan or blower that circulates the room air is kept inside the room and the condenser is placed outside through the opening made in the wall. 

Now-a-days, split air conditioners are common. In this, the compressor, condenser and its fan unit are placed in one pack while the cooling unit (vaporizer) with its fan is placed in another pack. The cooling unit houses the electrical and electronic controls and connects to the compressor unit using electric power cables and refrigerant piping which are connected skillfully after installation without the gas getting leaked. The window air conditioners come as factory fitted and tested with initial refrigerant filling.

The air conditioners also has a thermo-stat switch which keeps keep the compressor unit on or off depending upon the temperature of the cold air in the room.

The capacity of air conditioners to cool is designated in terms of ton refrigeration (TR). One TR is equivalent to a cooling rate of 3024 Kilocalories/hour (kcal/hr). Standard sizes of room air conditioning units used for home and small offices are 0.75 TR, 1 TR, 1.5 TR, 2 TR etc. Commonly, TR is simply called ton. So we hear about one ton, 1.5 ton, 2 ton and higher rated AC s. 

The compressor is the key moving machinery of an air conditioner. The compressor technology has advanced much in recent years. In old air conditioner, the compressors used to be reciprocating type. These used to be big and heavy and used to draw much electricity. In modern compressors, rotary compressor technology is used. The power consumption for rotary units are much lower for the same TR.

Air conditioner traders usually try to sell higher tonnage machines which are costlier and draws much higher electric power. As a simple thumb rule, a room of size 10 ft x 10 ft x 10 ft high which is only exposed to direct sunlight only on one or two sides can easily be managed with a 0.75 TR AC. However, people might be tempted to go for an AC of 1.5 TR quite often. Of course, the cooling rate of the higher ton machine is faster. But ACs are designed to work on-off using the thermostatic temperature control. A lower ton AC works a few minutes more than a higher capacity one under similar conditions. 

Electric Efficiency rating (EER) with star ratings are used for designating energy efficiency of electric appliances. The highest rating is 5 star and it has the lowest power consumption. But between a 2 or 3 star and a five star rating, the practical net savings on electricity is not much for an average user because the cost of the machine with higher star ratings usually much higher than the lower star rated machines. When the cost difference is in thousands of rupees, it is not prudent to go for the highest star rating unless the machine is intended for continuous working throughout the year which seldom happens.

Window ACs are to be preferred in place of split ACs if your room layout allows installation of window AC. Split AC should be the choice only if Window AC cannot be installed suitably with its condenser radiator in the open. Again, use a split AC when there is a risk of some one intruding through the window AC opening.

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In split ACs since the compressor unit could be located quite at a distance (such as the roof top) the likelihood of room noise could be much lower. The only noise you hear is of the fan of the cooling unit. However, split ACs are not a well suited choice if the unit is required to be shifted quite often. 

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In my opinion rotary type window air conditioners should be the first choice for small and medium homes and offices having rooms which are not so big. It is also better to limit its size to 0.75 TR or 1 TR. This is because, the lower TR machine draws much lower current from the house hold electric circuit. For example, a 0.75 TR window a/c consumes less than 1000 W of electric power if it is a rotary compressor type with at least 2 star rating. It may cost around Rs.15000/- while a 1.5 TR machine of similar rating would cost around Rs 26000/- and consumes about 1800 W of electric power. Obviously the lower rated ones are better both on account of initial costs and running costs. The higher rated ones would start and stop more making your home's electric wiring prone to higher sparking and burn outs. Again, the machines with reciprocating compressors for the same TR rating draws much higher electric power. Such second hand and reconditioned a/c machines are available in the grey markets in India at throw-away prices. However, their running costs would be very high if they are regularly to be used.

In places where humidity is low and water supply is not a big issue, the evaporation type coolers are much preferable both on account of initial and running costs. As the summer heat goes up with lowering of humidity in the air, these coolers give very comfortable cooling. However, they are not useful when humidity goes up during the onset of rains after summer. They are also not very effective in the coastal areas of India due to high humidity.

It is also not a very prudent decision to spent much money for fancy features of air conditioners. Of course, such fancy features are for those for whom money is not a big issue.

The best brands in air conditioners in India are Voltas, LG, Carrier Aircon, Samsung, etc. Voltas is totally an Indian brand and the current market leader.

Though I have advocated for window a/c of one or 0.75 TR, such machines are apparently in short supply as the traders normally do not seem to be keen in selling these for obvious reasons. So, if you are thinking of low tonnage AC, you have to be a little persuasive with the dealers.