Air Conditioner

In Japan, natural ventilation through large openings has been used for cooling in summer and medium season. However, air conditioner has become popular recently, because it is hot and humid in summer in most parts of Japan. It causes cooling energy consumption to rise continuously. Nowadays, as global warming has become a serious problem, natural ventilation has been considered as a key method for cooling energy conservation. However, there is insufficient knowledge of natural ventilation effectiveness on cooling energy conservation quantitatively.

Indoor thermal environment is much affected by characteristics of an equipped heating system. Suchthermal environmental factors as temperature, air velocity, radiant temperature and their distributionscan influence the thermal sensation and the energy consumption of a heating system.

Experiments using human subjects have been conducted to investigate the physiological andpsychological responses to two different heating methods, i.e. floor heating and air conditioner, in ahighly insulated house. This paper describes a study on the effects of the heating methods on skintemperature changes by investigating changes in skin temperature caused by thermal conditions,sexual differences in skin temperature change, the correlation between declared scores and drops inperipheral skin temperature using the experimental results.

An investigation was carried out in a multi-family building in New Jersey, USA of eight apartments, including resident interviews about air conditioner usage. Energy consumption for cooling varied widely across similar apartments, due to occupants' diverse beliefs about machine operation and economic considerations. 75% of residents did not use the thermostats, preferring to switch the system on and off according to comfort needs. Concludes that the problem is not lack of user education, but rather poor user-friendliness of air conditioner controls.