I'm considering buying a new split unit air conditioner for my
home. Actually, this will be for a room that is planned as a
short-term rental. I'm located in Bombay, India, now referred to as
Mumbai.
One question I am facing is whether an inverter or a regular
air-conditioner is a better choice. I was told by one dealer that
inverter air-conditioners can be problematic choices, especially in
humid climates near the sea. This pretty much describes my home, which
is less than a kilometer from the shores of the Arabian Sea. I checked
this out on the web a bit. While I did not find much information, I
did find some supporting evidence. Notably,
Daikin Inverter AC Unit Fail – Moisture / Salts Damage to PCB.
Basically, the issue is that an inverter is rather more complex
electronically than a regular air-conditioner, because it is doing
more. This manifests itself in more complex circuitry and more circuit
boards. These are referred to here as PCBs (presumably Printed Circuit
boards), Given salty damp air, these circuits corrode over time. And
in an inverter, there are more of these circuits. And they apparently
cost more to repair. The bottom line, then, is that if you are near
the sea, don't use an inverter, because you will have more frequent
breakdowns and higher maintenance costs.
What is puzzling is, if this is true, why isn't there more discussion
about this on the net? And other dealers I asked disagreed about this.
I'll also mention parenthetically that I have tentatively settled on
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries machines. This is not directly relevant to
this question, so I'll leave out the details of that – it is specific
to my specific buying environment. One dealer I talked to said the
PCBs in MHI machines were silicone-coated, so it wasn't an issue. I'm
sceptical.
UPDATE/ADDENDUM: I eventually bought a normal A/C for the rental mentioned above. But now I'm considering buying an A/C for my own room. The difference here is that I run the A/C in my own room most of the time, so maybe it would make sense to buy an inverter for it even if it doesn't last as long as a regular A/C. Thoughts?
Best Answer
I'm in Michigan and we get harsh winters and salt our roads. Salty roads and ice get on our cars, and this combination is really harsh on our metal parts of our cars. Salty humidity is also very harsh on any metal parts, even galvanized steel. Now galvanized steel in the US has improved in the past 20 years, but it is not impervious to salt water.
That said, you will need to have all important parts coated some how to prevent corrosion as salty humidity is super corrosive. There is a service in the US that coats cell phones with a nano coating. They don't even take apart the cell phone. After the phone is processed you can drop it in a pool and it will still work. The phone is guaranteed for life vs moisture and water. Liquipel.
If the AC company has this service available they can coat their PCB boards and that should help a lot. Or they can use another coating on the PCB boards. The coating cannot conduct electricity or it will short out the boards.