SMART AIR-CONDITIONER CONTROLLER FOR EFFECTIVE ENERGY AND COST MANAGEMENT

The utilization of Air-Conditioners (Air-Conds) nowadays has increased significantly ever since the Movement Control Order (MCO) has been issued. This is mainly because most people are working from home. The increase in the number of Air-Cond usage especially without proper energy management among dwellers increases electricity demand in residential areas. However, most Air-Cond owners are ignorant of how much energy is consumed by their Air-Cond which leads to an increase in the utility bill. Thus, this project is conducted to design a smart Air-Cond system to resolve this issue, as well as to investigate the effectiveness of a Smart Air-Cond system in decreasing the energy usage of Air-Cond and the electric costs. “The Smart Air-Conditioner Controller for Effective Energy and Cost Management” is a system that comprises of Smart Air-Cond Socket and Smart Air-Cond Controller. The Smart Air-Cond Socket is used to check and monitor energy consumption. Meanwhile, the Smart Air-Cond Controller can be further divided into the “ON and OFF” Controller and the Temperature Regulator Controller. The “ON and OFF” Controller is used to remotely switching ON and OFF the Air-Cond, meanwhile, the Temperature Regulator Controller is used to regulate the room temperature according to Malaysian thermal comfort standards which are 24°C - 26°C with 26°C as the optimum temperature. The energy consumption is then used to calculate the electricity bill based on the Sarawak Energy Berhad’s tariff. In this study, two experiments were conducted, with the presence of a Smart Air-Cond Controller as the manipulated variable. Then, the data from the experiments are compared. From the experiments, it is shown that the temperature of the Air-Cond without the Smart Controller will stay constant, and the room temperature kept on falling until it stays below the thermal comfort standard. Meanwhile, the temperature of the Air-Cond with the Smart Controller will change according to the room ambient temperature. These temperature changes kept the surrounding temperature within the thermal comfort standard. Another valuable finding from this project is that the Smart Air-Cond Controller can reduce the average energy consumption and average electricity bills by 0.1% and RM 0.11 respectively