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While I don't pretend to know everything about how these things are marketed, I do know that new, government mandated energy efficiency standards will kick in next year. Generally, in order to extract the most latent heat from the air stream being blown through the condenser and evaporator coils, the size of the coil pack, and the surface area exposed to the condenser and evaporator unit fans, must be larger than used to be the case. Since more coil and fin surface is required, meaning more metal is used, the "package" ends up larger, both for the condensing unit and the evaporator, since the two have to have somewhat similar heat transfer surface, to balance each other. The condenser and evaporator coils are usually made of copper tubing, with aluminum fins to promote radiational heat transfer. Copper is currently at its all time high as to price per pound, so the larger coils, which use more copper, will be more expensive to produce, and, therefore, to buy. The offsetting factor, at least on paper, is that the new units will operate more efficiently than the old units, extracting more heat per watt of electricity used in their operation. Thus, the yellow sticker on these units, which tells you the S.E.E.R. (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating) of the unit, will be above 13, instead of around 10, a 30% increase in operating efficiency for the same amount of cooling capacity, as rated in BTU's.
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