Study on energy loss through door open while air conditioner running in commercial store

Abstract

While air conditioner is running, leaving doors and windows open is a great way to reduce operating efficiency and undermine the air conditioning system’s ability to bring the indoor to a comfortable temperature. However, merchants want to business with open the door to attract more customers and to increase sales. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the heat loss and thermal environment through the door open while air conditioner running. To achieve this goal, using full-scale measurement with the commercial store during the cooling period, the infiltration rate, thermal environment and energy consumption of air conditioner with door opened and door closed state were measured. The measured results show that the infiltration rate at the door opened state was increased by about 21.3 times compared to the door closed state. When the set temperature of the air conditioner was 24 °C, the room temperature with open the door was measured to be about 5 °C higher than the cases of close the door. However, the energy consumption was measured approximately 12 kWh/day and there was not difference with door state. This means that the energy consumption is not increased if the indoor air temperature would not reach the set point temperature of air conditioner.