Virtual Wattmeter Power Consumption Billing Division for Building Air‐Conditioners Supporting User's Energy Saving Intention

Abstract

Abstract This paper provides a field test of a new power consumption billing division for building air‐conditioning systems. Since almost all power is consumed by a shared outdoor unit, power consumption bill must be logically divided among each tenant's indoor unit without using any physical meters. First, the paper discusses the algorithm of our ‘virtual wattmeter’ method for a logical division of the power consumption. Our field test result shows that the correlation coefficient between set room temperature and billing division was significant, and shifting the set temperature by 1°C had the effect of decreasing the hourly billing division by 21%. Thus, our virtual wattmeter is a unique method that can reflect the user's energy‐saving intention by adjusting the set temperature on the power consumption billing division. Copyright © 2010 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.