8 000 BTU air conditioner power consumption

Calculating the power consumption of an 8 000 BTU air conditioner at different EER ratings and the consumption of portable and window units of the same cooling capacity.

To buy an air conditioner, you need to know the correct size of unit that you need for your space. The size or capacity of the unit will be determined by its British Thermal Units (BTU), which indicates the cooling power of the unit and the room size it can cool effectively.

Air conditioners are also quite big power consumers, and this is why investing in energy-efficient units will save you on electricity costs.

But is it possible to determine the amount of power consumption of various air conditioner BTUs to get an idea of how much power the unit is using?

BTUs and power consumption

The BTU cooling capacity of an air conditioner essentially refers to the cooling power of the unit and how well the cooling power can cool rooms of a particular square footage.

Certain BTU sizes can only cool certain room sizes, but that is not the only aspect that should be considered with BTU capacities.

Knowing the power-consumption of the air conditioner according to the BTU cooling power can give you an idea of how much power the unit uses.

8 000 BTU air conditioner power consumption

If you have an 8 000 BTU air conditioner and you also know the Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER) rating of your air conditioner, it is not difficult to determine your unit’s estimated power consumption.

The calculation you can use to get a sense of the estimated amount of power that your 8 000 BTU air conditioner uses is to divide the BTU output by the EER rating.

If the EER rating of the 8 000 BTU air conditioner is, for instance, 10, we can deduce that the unit uses about 800 watts of power consumption to operate. The lower the EER rating of the AC, the higher the number of watts, or power consumption, will be.

Thus, it is more favourable when the air conditioner has a better and higher EER rating, as this decreases your unit’s overall power consumption and saves you more on electricity.

Window air conditioners and portable air conditioners are the only cooling systems that range in the 8 000 BTU size, so it can be helpful to determine the individual power consumptions of both units at different EER ratings.

On average, portable air conditioners use more power than window air conditioners, because they average an EER rating of 8.5, though this varies and can be higher.

If you do not know the EER of your unit, you can calculate it yourself with the BTU and watts of an air conditioner on hand. To do this you must divide the BTU of the AC by its wattage to get the EER rating.

How many watts will an 8 000 BTU portable AC with an 8.5 and 12 EER use?

Let us presume that you have an 8 000 BTU portable air conditioner with an average EER of 8.5. If you divide the BTU by the EER, it means the unit consumes an estimated wattage of 940.

If your portable air conditioner is powered by less watts, it is possible that it will have a higher EER.

Presuming, in another case, that the unit is powered by 650 watts, you will find that the unit has an EER of 12.3. The 650 watts is much lower than the 940 watts of an 8.5 EER unit.

What about an 8 000 BTU window air conditioner with an EER of 12 and 14?

Again, the higher the EER rating, the better and lower the unit’s power consumption will be. If your window air conditioner has an EER rating of 12, this reduces the wattage from 800 (calculated from a unit with an EER rating of 10) to 667 watts.

Similarly, the 667 watts will be reduced if the unit has an EER of 14, to 571 watts of power consumption for the 8 000 BTU window unit.

Are there any other ways to determine the power consumption of an 8 000 BTU unit?

Besides using the BTU and EER calculation to determine your air conditioner’s power consumption, two more simpler ways are to check the specification sheet for the watts, or the amps and volts.

The specs sheet will indicate the power consumption in watts located in the same section as the amperage (ampers) and voltage (volts).

If you find that only amps and volts are provided, you can multiply the amps and volts to get the power consumption in watts of an 8 000 BTU unit as well as that of units of other BTU sizes.

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