ActronAir is a multi-million dollar business that began in a garage more than 40 years ago and has undergone significant changes in the past decade.
One area where the company has really raised the bar is in the area of energy efficiency, which was the theme of a presentation by ActronAir’s engineering and business excellence manager, James Martin.
As part of its energy efficiency push, Martin says there has been a major focus on controls in a bid to get the best results from its product range.
He admits there are a lot of variable involved in building the best unit possible.
“It’s about bringing together the best components and technologies and getting thermal loads right,” Martin says.
“There’s the fan, heat exchangers, the design, refrigeration, heating – putting all that together in a box so it all works seamlessly – although behind the scenes its quite complex to juggle.”
Martin says today’s units can be used for a much broader range of applications.
He also outlined a research project that is contributing to improved energy efficiency in the residential home.
CSR House is a living lab that feeds data to the federal government’s Low Carbon Living Project.
The house uses ActronAir air conditioning units. Moreover, Martin says ActronAir was able to reduce the amount of air conditioning required at CSR House by 50 per cent.
He says ActronAir used thermal modelling to achieve its goal including night and day zoning within the house and also by creating the best thermal envelope possible.
More than 3.5km of instrumentation cabling and 140 sensors are installed at the house to provide data which monitors heat flow through materials, thermal bridging across walls, internal temperature and humidity conditions, subfloor conditions, moisture levels, and energy usage for appliances as well as heating and cooling.