AS 3823.1.5:2015 Performance of electrical appliances— Air conditioners and heat pumps
5.1.1 General conditions
All equipment within the scope of this Standard shall have the cooling capacities and energy efficiency ratios determined in accordance with the provisions of this Standard and rated at the cooling test conditions specified in Table 5.1. All tests shall be carried out in accordance with the requirements of Appendix A and the test methods specified in Clause 7. All tests shall be conducted with the equipment functioning at full-load operation, as defined in Clause 3.10. The electrical input values used for rating purposes shall be measured during the cooling capacity test. Units that evaporate condensate collected from the evaporator shall be allowed to do so during the capacity test (see Clause 5.1.2).
Units that have a supplementary water tank intended to contain supplementary water that is fed to the evaporatively cooled condenser shall have capacity tests performed with and without this feature operating, subject to the requirements of Clause 5.1.3 and Appendix B. If a unit automatically turns off once the supplementary water tank becomes empty, a capacity test with this feature operating is the only capacity test required. See Table B1 in Appendix B for a summary of these requirements.
If the manufacturer of equipment having a variable-speed compressor does not provide information on the full-load frequency and how to achieve it during the cooling capacity test, the equipment shall be operated with its thermostat or controller set to its minimum allowable temperature setting.
5.1.3 Tests using supplementary water evaporation feature
Performance and cooling capacity tests shall be performed using the supplementary water evaporation feature as per the manufacturer’s instructions, if applicable. Water added to a unit’s supplementary water tank shall be 35°C ±1°C. All performance parameters for the standard rating test shall also be recorded for any cooling capacity tests that use the supplementary water evaporation feature. The test procedure includes determining the duration of time that the supplementary water tank can operate at standard cooling rating conditions. These procedures are specified in Appendix B.
NOTE: Some units are fitted with a supplementary water evaporation feature designed to provide additional water for the evaporatively cooled condenser and/or compressor. They generally require the user to fill a supplementary water tank and manually select an operational mode via the unit’s control panel or remote control that turns this supplementary water evaporation feature on. This operational mode may override other thermostat and fan settings and is designed to achieve higher cooling capacities and greater energy efficiency while this feature is active. When these units deactivate their supplementary water evaporation feature (for instance, when they detect that there is insufficient water in the supplementary water tank), they may automatically revert to cooling without the aid of the supplementary water evaporation feature, or they may switch themselves off.