Undertaken By: Council on Energy, Environment and Water, Recent Publication: 2020
Better living standards, disposable income and need for cooling have led to increase in the uptake of Residential Air Conditioners (RAC), Commercial Air-Conditioners (CAC), as well as Mobile Air Conditioners (MAC). Due to rise in the demand of cooling equipment, the market for servicing these appliances have also increased rapidly. Currently there are about 200,000 service technicians in the stationary air-conditioning service sector. This sector consists of a mix of trained and untrained technicians employed in registered (formal/organized) as well as unregistered (informal/unorganized) enterprises. The servicing sector in India relies heavily on the informal/unorganized sector to bridge the servicing gap. Majority of the AC service technicians are semi–skilled, with limited operational knowledge (only installation and few routine checks) and insufficient diagnostic skills.
The role of the air-conditioning service sector is significant not only from the perspective of reducing Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) & Hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) emissions during servicing, but also from the perspective of maintaining energy efficiency and ensuring safe operation of the equipment. The servicing sector accounts for up to 40 per cent of the total refrigerant consumption in India (Ozone Cell, 2017). According to the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP) 2018 estimate, better servicing practices can result in close to 15% improvement in energy efficiency.
The work developed under this initiative is aimed at providing guidance documents that can help streamline the training of these servicing sector personel.