The heat wave around here has brought out the air conditioner problems. Also an occasional power interruption causes the window AC to reset to power off and temperature set too high.
In air conditioner sizing, it's supposed be best to not oversize the AC unit. Also, on my machinery I have used some AC inverter drives, single phase in, 3 phase variable speed out. I'm wondering if a more efficient air conditioner could be made by using a 3 phase variable speed compressor and controlling the temperature by controlling the speed of the compressor, instead of cycling on and off?
If nothing else it would be interesting to hack into my window AC to turn in ON after power is cycled if the temperature is above a certain set point. Might be easier to just control compressor and fans then to try to work with the existing controller (LED status indicators as microcontroller inputs and outputs "push" the buttons).
A poor man's alternative to the variable speed Air Conditioner might be to use multiple window units and set them to come on at different temperatures, might need 6000 BTU's on a mild day and 30,000+ BTU's on the hot days.
A hobby project that saves money and/or makes things work the way I want them to sounds interesting to me.
RogerN