The AC industry will need to respond quickly to maximise business opportunities and ensure we deliver on the demands from our customers to meet the ever changing improvements in building designs, says Graham Wright
The latest developments in AC technology are being driven by many different issues all of which can be grouped in to five main areas - efficiency, installation, maintenance, training and environmental.

Over the past 10 to 15 years we have, in my opinion, developed products faster, trained more people, reduced cost and re-engineered whole market sectors to ensure that we meet the ever changing demands of regulations and customer expectations. However, we should not become complacent as the market which is being driven by regulation will continue to look for further energy and cost saving measures.

The performance criteria for air conditioning and heat pump systems below 12kW has recently changed to meet the new EU legislation known as ERP or the Energy Related Products directive. This fundamentally changes the way we measure the efficiency of systems by measuring the performance of a temperature range in both heating and cooling so that instead of EER (energy efficiency ratio) or CoP (coefficient of performance), manufacturers now have to provide data on an EU website and use the seasonal measures SEER and SCoP.

This is the first phase of the adoption of more realistic performance figures. Air-to-water heat pumps and more complex AC systems will follow in 2015 and will allow designers to calculate systems performance far more accurately.

While air conditioning products will continue to evolve, the spotlight is beginning to turn onto designs and installation of system within the next generation of buildings. These structures are becoming ever more effective at keeping heat in as their design is being driven by further improvements of building regulations with the latest version of Part L about to be published. This, we expect, will focus on fabric and energy efficiency (FEES) and will lead to designs having to balance the requirements of reduced CO2 emissions against the need to provide comfort throughout a building's design envelope.

Studies show that, even if the best products are used, if they are installed badly and the building occupiers change the way the system is being run, this can have a detrimental effect on the expected running cost and therefore CO2 emission reductions will be lost.

Regulators are now looking at ways of incentivising the use of extended handover periods and terms such as 'Soft Landings' are being used to describe what could become a revolution in contracting. Changes to BREEAM and other industry guides will lead the way so that extra credits will be allowed for systems that are commissioned and handed over during an extended period and further credits will be available if systems are monitored and rectified over the period of the working life. This would mean a change to the maintenance regimes now used, where preventive maintenance generally is a nice-to-have rather than being an essential part of a building's life cycle.

To enable this work to be carried out effectively, training provided by manufacturers will become more popular as equipment becomes more complex. Moreover, the knowledge required by designers, installers, and maintenance staff will have to be improved to ensure that they understand how to ensure that the energy saving benefits can be achieved, not only in the initial phase of operation, but over its entire life.

On top of this, legislation requiring regular inspections is likely to be strengthened so that annual inspections will ensure that air conditioning systems are being used effectively and meet the environmental requirements of building efficiency and impending changes to the F-Gas regulations.

The changes to F-Gas are likely to start a substantial transformation to our industry; not only will we be faced with tighter controls on the use of F-Gases, but discussion on phase downs and the use of lower GWP refrigerants will also mean that we will have to keep up with new methods of design and operation of AC systems over the coming years.

Monitor HFC usage

Monitoring of HFC use will be key and, while the UK is seen as one of the leading countries in Europe with 27,000 registered technicians being listed on the scheme, with 93 per cent of these holding a full certificate, it is clear that we need to keep the pressure up to ensure that all personnel that use HFCs are registered on the relevant databases. Amendment in administration from DEFRA to the Environment Agency will ensure that enforcement of the new regulations should be improved.

Phasing down of certain high GWP (global warming potential) refrigerants will be accelerated so that, by 2020, all HFCs with a GWP above the expected threshold of 2500 will be banned or in the middle of a fast-tracked phase out. Common refrigerants such as R134a, R407C and R410A will start a lengthy phase down period so that they will become less common by the time the minimum usage limits are reached in 2025 or 2030. In their place, new lower GWP fluids will be far more common.

The choice of replacement refrigerants is going to be critical as they must not only be safe to use, but also must yield the necessary system efficiencies of the current refrigerants. Some of the natural fluids offer virtually no GWP, but they have flammability issues or use high operational pressures.

The alternatives such as R32 and HFOs, which offer a lower GWP and are less flammable, will still give us system operational performance that can exceed the current class of refrigerants. However, installers will have to be trained in their use
Different types of equipment will suit different applications and this choice, I am sure, will affect system choices in the future.

// The author is legislation specialist at Daikin Airconditioning UK, vice-president of the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Manufacturers Association (HEVAC), and chair of the HEVAC Technical Committee. He is also chairman of the board of independent certification body Building Engineering Services Competence Assessment Ltd (BESCA) //