this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Mildly Interesting
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Can you explain 400% efficiency?
IIRC for every watt of electricity, 4 watts of energy get moved from the inside bit of your AC to the outside unit
What the other guy said. It's down to the fact that you aren't actually heating/cooling down a room, you're just moving the heat already there around. E.g. in winter, instead of producing your own heat with electricity, which is 100% efficient, you take heat from the outside and put it inside, using a lot less energy in the process than if you were to create the heat inside of your home.
Though I'm not sure if it's that efficient, I think I heard it's more around the 150-200% mark, but I'm not sure.
Most cheap air conditioners have COPs (coefficients of performance) around 3.2-3.5, which means 320-350% efficiency. In real world conditions, the best systems reach 4.5, though the theoretical limit is about 8.0.