Experimental performance analysis of existing conventional AC air conditioner and corresponding new pure DC air conditioner

摘要

DC grid has gained a special attention by many researchers, especially in the last decade. The two main factors that emphasize the DC grid area of study include the DC nature of the majority of Distributed Generation (DG) sources, as well as the emerging of new DC loads that need several power conversion stages when connected into the current AC network. Therefore, it is needed to study the possibility of converting, either partially or completely, the current AC network to a corresponding DC network. In this paper, split-unit AC air conditioner performance is investigated and compared with a corresponding split-unit DC air conditioner. This DC version of the air conditioner is available recently in the international market working directly based on 48 VDC, and has a variable-speed compressor. Several aspects are discussed in this paper including energy consumption and power quality issues. The investigation is carried out for both grid-connected and standalone cases. The measurements revealed that the DC air conditioner has energy savings of 25.29 % for the grid-connected case and 41.22 % for the standalone case.