This a what a user posted in comments section of how his avoidance of Inverter AC on advice of AC mechanic costed him thousand of rupees every year.
I purchased 1 ton 5 star Non-inverter AC for 20k because my AC mechanic said PCB will cost 15 thousand. I was getting a croma 1.5 ton 5 star inverter AC in offer for only 25K. I let it go. This was 5 years I used it. I live near area where drain flows nearby so chemicals are there in air, so atleast once a year coil will leak or sometimes even twice. The power consumption keeps increases as non-inverter ac get old. My one month bill in summer would come 7500 when I don’t use AC the bill will be maximum 1200 rupees. So lets take 1500 rupees. 6000 rupees is the bill for a month.
Now after a year I got Croma’s 2 Ton inverter 5 star ac for my office. The office was 680 square feet carpet. YES! For this room 5 ton ac is required. But I knew one thing that AC will cool slowly & the insulation was very good of the office and it was female staff only who don’t want that much cooling. In summer the AC was running at full ampere. I have delco starter that shows ampere. The highest ampere it goes was 4amps. My non-inverter ac uses the same amt of amps. Two months bill after running the ac on from 9 am to 6pm was 4000 rupees. Nothing else in office. Without ac the bill is 400 rupees in winters for 2 months so 4000/2months = 1800-200= 900 per month ac bill for 2 ton inverter ac.
So 900 rupees is the monthly bill for for 2 ton ac running at full load to cool a room 2.5 times above capacity while my non-invertor 1 ton ac cooling a room of only 120 sqft was ₹6000. Here too I used to keep it on from evening 9pm to 3 am and sometimes keep it on and off in the afternoon. Manually turning off to save power. So if you compare I also used to use 6 hours and then 3 hours on and off. So in the office 2 ton ac double capacity is 1800 bill. even if I am using double that is 18 hours. This is the maximum by bill also should come 900 because my ac is only 1 ton capacity. But let us take as double by bill should not be more than 3600 rupees where is 6000 where is 3600. After working for 1 year no problems and it just next to Khadi mill & still nothing happened to the even the external coil.
Later we shifted to a new office which was 1042 sq-ft in size. Now since we knew that these ac will somehow manage to cool this room too but not that easily. It would cool the room of around 70% which was the calling center then there was a13 feet office and another area near the window where sunlight would get in. It would not cool that area but it would not be that hot, so the female staff who cannot stand AC used to go and sit there. So we managed with 2 ton Croma ac for 8 months. During sept/oct it would not get hot. So we used to tell the cleaning lady who would clean the office at 8 am to turn on the ac so when the staff comes in at 10 it was fully cooled and it would stay like that for the entire day. The bill remained the same 4k for 2 months.
Then in summer we purchase another IFB 2 ton 5 star inverter ac and both were cooling perfectly yes the far end would not be very cool but very pleasant and those who cannot bear AC would sit there. I think another 1.5 ton on that side would have made it cool. Today that Croma AC is 4 years old and no problems at all the IFB ac is around 3 years. While last year I switched my home ac to 1 ton 5 star inverter ac. Last year my bill came so less. My house has a lot of gaps and at night and also at night I keep the door open and cool the other room which is 120sqft. Calculating the usage it seems only AC bill should be 600 rupees.
Yes If a 2 ton inverter ac on full load gives only 1800 rupees monthly bill Mine should give only 600 rupees. Lets see. I have heard people who put LG inverter ac get only 600 rupees bill extra. So this advice that non-inverter ac has some use it bad advice. Now my AC mechanic said that PCB can be repaired. He has repaired two PCBs and these are first/old models of inverter ac and these were chinese stuff.
New Inverter AC PCB rarely gets corrupt and now Panasonic, Haier all come with 5 year PC warranty too. If you are using ac regularly then going in for 5 star inverter AC will still work out cheaper. The amount of money you save in bill is easily 2000-5000 if not 10000 in a year. And can even recover cost of new AC.