HVAC -- Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning

New Math for Summer -- The Cost To Chill

By MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times

With the dog days of summer just around the corner, homeowners who need a new central air-conditioner face the usual tough choice: buy a cheap but inefficient system that racks up high utility bills, or splurge on a more efficient but more expensive model that costs less to run.

That equation changes in January, when new national efficiency standards take effect that will eliminate the least efficient models.

The new regulations will make the machines on the market more expensive and physically larger, a problem in some houses. Further, some consumers may be confused by the products offered. Emerson, which supplies components to air-conditioner manufacturers, commissioned a survey that found that hardly any consumers understood how efficiency is measured.

Environmentalists predict, though, that consumers will quickly embrace the more efficient models, and that people who choose air-conditioners for others - primarily landlords and home builders - will be forced to buy units that make better financial sense for the residents.

Not everyone makes the same calculation about the cost of keeping cool. For example, Jan and Alan Kaplan, of Potomac, Md., found their 20-year-old air-conditioner conked out a few days ago, and they decided to replace it with a basic model for $2,450, not a more efficient one that would have cost $1,100 more.

"The price differential was so much, and it was one of those expenditures I wasn't counting on anyway," Mr. Kaplan said. "I didn't want to make it any higher than it needed to be."

The efficiency of central air-conditioners is measured by an obscure yardstick called Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio, known as SEER, which is a way of measuring how much electricity is consumed for each unit of heat removed from the house. The current minimum is SEER 10, and the new rule will make the minimum 13, which means the machines will do 30 percent more work with the same amount of energy. Models up to SEER 19 are already on the market; those below 13 are being phased out.

For environmentalists, the new standard means saving energy when demand for power is the highest, so that fewer power plants will be needed overall. "You can be comfortable knowing you're going to get air-conditioning in a way that's not going to burden the electric grid, and will help clean the air while keeping you cool," said Kit Kennedy, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Yet environmentalists and manufacturers disagree about how to accurately calculate the cost differential between a SEER 10 and a SEER 13. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy puts the figure at $171, but an industry group, the Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Institute, says it's $763. The Energy Department weighs in at $341, saying the price is justified by the cost of the electricity saved.

The new standard was adopted after an epic legal battle. The Clinton administration produced a flurry of appliance standards in its last days, including one for central air-conditioners. But when the Bush administration took office, it blocked many of these rules and proposed a standard of 12 instead, which would have meant an energy savings of 20 percent. Environmentalists sued. The air-conditioning industry was divided over which standard to adopt; finally, opponents of the more lax standard gave up after an appeals court ruled in favor of the 13 standard.

New standards for window air-conditioners, water heaters, dishwashers, washers and dryers are also taking hold. A standard for home furnaces, also big energy users, was expected in 1994, but the effort to find a standard has stalled.

Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a nonprofit group in Boston, said that most of the new standards benefit society because the cumulative savings are large, even if the savings to an individual are small.

A new refrigerator with the Environmental Protection Agency's "energy star" rating for efficiency, for example, might reduce electric consumption by 10 to 15 percent.

Total consumption, however, is modest, about 550 kilowatt-hours a year, so the savings is only about 50 kilowatt-hours a year, Mr. deLaski said. "If you're paying a dime, that's five bucks over the course of a year," he said. "It's not enough to help you make the mortgage payment."

But central air-conditioners can use hundreds of dollars of electricity a month in summer, and many of those sold next year will use half the electricity of the models that were sold 20 years ago. This means that overall savings could be substantial for homeowners, as well as for the country as a whole.

At Emerson, Tom Bettcher, executive vice president, said that many of the models being replaced are from many years ago, and well below the SEER 10 rating. Thus, he said, "a lot of people will see a nice step-up when they make this change."

But contractors who sell equipment may not push the most efficient - and most expensive - models, he said, because they do not want to seem overpriced.