Replaced old fans at home with these new energy-efficient Atomberg Fans. These ones have significantly lower power consumption than your older fans(>10yrs) at home. It uses Brushless DC Motors(BLDC) which is more efficient than the older Induction Motors. For comparison, the very old fans at your homes consume around 90-100W, (Latest (<5yr) normal fans consume 50W-60W) whereas these Atomberg fans consume 28W at their highest speed.
Atomberg fans cost around INR 2700(base model) online compared to INR 1200-1400 for normal fans. But over the long run, the amount of electricity savings you generate, outweigh your higher initial costs. Assuming you run a fan 12hrs a day(heavy use case), at full speed in summers, the old fans and recent normal fans consume 1.2units, 0.72units of electricity daily costing you INR 12/INR 7.2 per day(Assuming INR 10/unit).
Whereas Atomberg fans will consume 0.34Wh costing you INR 3.4. So a savings of INR 258/INR 114 per month per fan. You will recover your entire new fan costs in 10 months and 24 months in the worst-case scenarios. And you know what, for lower speeds, Atomberg fans consume even less. For Fan Speeds 1-5, power consumption wattages are 3W, 7W, 12W, 18W and 28W respectively. Remember to bypass the wall fan regulators while installation so that there are no power losses in regulators. (I have covered losses in regulators in a previous post)So it becomes a no-brainer to switch to these fans asap. It also comes with an IR remote which has speed control, sleep and timer modes for auto turn off/speed reduction after some time. I love not having to get up from my chair to change speeds. 🙂
Coming to the electronics, I wanted to do a teardown of the fan in itself, but the metal cups were press-fit very tightly and I would need to make scratches on the body to pry it open. I didn’t want to do that on a new fan. 🙂
But I am sure there will be an SMPS and motor control circuitry in there with some motor windings and permanent magnets. The IR remote is a generic China one with a very common single keypad/IR transmitter HS9000P IC with built-in crystals. So no external components are needed for this IC. It has your classic carbon pad/PCB finger for buttons. I don’t think the BOM will be more than INR 25 for this remote at large prices.
Final thoughts: I think most households should switch to these fans(at least on the bare minimum, replace the most used fans in your homes and if you have very old fans). I don’t know the long-term reliability of these fans(Comes with a 3yr warranty on motors), as the company has been around for only a few years. But I don’t see any major issues mentioned in reviews online. But we will see that in times to come.
BTW Atomberg an IIT Bombay startup. I am not associated with it and this is not a paid review. Just personal logical opinions. 🙂
