Dubai, UAE: Daikin Industries has announced being awarded the Minister’s Prize, The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, for promotion of energy conservation through worldwide expansion of HFC-32 air conditioners, and the Chairman’s Prize of Energy Conservation Center Japan (ECCJ), for its VRV Series at the Chairman Energy Conservation Grand Prize for excellent energy conservation equipment for the fiscal year 2015 by ECCJ.

The award ceremony, the announcement said, was held on January 27 at ENEX/Smart Energy Japan 2016, which took place at Tokyo Big Sight.

Daikin, which, in 2012, purportedly became the first company to commercialise air conditioners using refrigerant HFC-32, said to have a low impact on global warming, elaborated that it was awarded the Minister’s Prize for its contribution to mitigating the impact of global warming.

Giving details, the company said that not only has it expanded its distribution channels and sales activities for the products, but it has also laid the groundwork for HFC-32 adoption by lending technical assistance in the formulation of rules for international standards, and providing training to technicians. These efforts, claimed Daikin, resulted in the use of more than 5.5 million units of HFC-32 air conditioners in 47 countries worldwide by the end of 2015.

Currently, all manufacturers in Japan reportedly sell HFC-32 air conditioners, and their use is projected to have a significant impact in reducing worldwide greenhouse gases in the future.

The VRV Series for the Japanese market of multi-split type air conditioners for commercial buildings, said Daikin, significantly reduces annual electricity consumption, as a result of a new scroll compressor that raises operation efficiency at the time of low load, and new control technology that controls refrigerant temperature automatically by adjusting to the load during heating and cooling.

According to Daikin, an investigation of annual use of air conditioners in actual buildings revealed that air conditioners operate at an extremely high load only for short periods, whereas operation below 50% of rated capacity occurred for approximately 90% of operation time. Consequently, the key point for realisation of a net-zero energy building is, how much efficiency improves when load is low, Daikin pointed out. In the VRV Series, a significant increase in efficiency was achieved at the time of low load, and compared to conventional models, Daikin revealed. Standby power consumption was reduced by 15%, it added, and explained that as a result, the amount of total annual electricity consumption was reduced approximately by 21%.