Electricity-saving products now more popular to Vietnamese consumers

Vietnamese people, who use an increasing number of electrical goods nowadays, have become more interested in electricity-saving products. Analysts say this line of products will be more favored on the market.

Since the beginning of the year, home appliance manufacturers, such as Panasonic, Dailin, Sanyo, Samsung and Hitachi have launched into the market air-conditioners using inverter technology. According to the manufacturers, the products allow consumers to save 20-60 percent of electricity.

Statistics show that by early August, 546,654 air conditioners were sold in Vietnam, 85 percent of which had a capacity of 9,000-15,000 BTU. The statistics did not determine how many air conditioners with inverters were consumed. However, the number of these products, according to supermarkets, accounted for 35-50 percent of the total products sold.

At Wonder Buy home appliance supermarket in HCM City, the air conditioners with inverters account for 35 percent, while the proportion is 60 percent at Best Carings.

“Nowadays, when seeking to purchase air conditioners, customers always ask for information about electricity consumption levels and want to buy electricity-saving products,” said Hung, Marketing Director of Wonder Buy.

There are also refrigerators with inverters, especially the products with the capacity of 350 litres and more. In principle, the refrigerators with high capacity always consume more power. Dang Minh Duc from Best Carings said, in fact the refrigerators with inverters first appeared on the market a long time ago. However, since the refrigerators a capacity of less than 250 litres accounted for 84-86 percent of the refrigerator market share (about one million units were consumed in the first seven months of the year, according to the market survey firm GfK), manufacturers did not advertise the electricity-saving benefit of their products.

As for more common products, such as fluorescent lamps, Dien Quang Lamp Joint Stock Company has lowered the capacity of its products from 40W to 38W. Normal lamps can hardly be seen on the market now and have been replaced by compact lamps with a capacity of 5-18W. Five years ago, Philips launched into the compact lamps market in Vietnam which allowed consumers to save up to 10 percent electricity. Recently, Dien Quang has also stepped up the production of electricity-saving compact lamps.

In fact, experts have not agreed on the actual electricity-saving ratio of electricity saving products, especially air conditioners with inverters.

Nguyen Thanh Toan from the HCM City Power Saving Centre affirmed that in principle the inverter will lessen the power to be consumed by air conditioners, but it is difficult to define the electricity saving ratio, because it still depends on the method of using the appliance, the environment, as well time and use frequency.

The centre once conducted a survey and discovered that on average, a family ran its air conditioner for four hours a day. An air conditioner has the average capacity of 9000 BTU, and it consumes 750W of electricity per hour. It would be attractive if a family can save 30 percent that energy.

The owner of Cong Danh shop in Go Vap District in HCM City, which specializes in repairing air conditioners, said though the prices of air conditioners with inverters are always higher than normal products (higher by 2-3 million dong), the electricity-saving products are now the first choice of many consumers.-Saigon tiep thi

Tags: Electricity-saving products