December 23, 2019 | Written by Hitachi-Johnson Controls Air Conditioning Communications Staff

The Energy Conservation Center, Japan today revealed the winners of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 Energy Conservation Grand Prize of Japan. We are honored to announce that our room air conditioner “Shirokuma-kun” Premium X Series, launched in the Japan market this autumn, received the FY2019 Energy Conservation Grand Prize, Product & Business Model Category, ECCJ Chairman’s Award (The Energy Conservation Center, Japan Chairman’s Award). 

The “Shirokuma-kun” Premium X Series room air conditioner comes with the following outstanding features: “Frost Wash” and “Fan Robo” features for the indoor unit, and the industry’s first “outdoor unit heat exchanger auto cleaning” feature.

Our world class engineers have consistently been focusing on how to maintain cleanliness in the interior of our air conditioner units. This has led them to develop unique features within the industry, including the indoor unit heat exchanger auto clean “Frost Wash” which rapidly removing dirt and grease from the indoor unit heat exchanger by automatically freezing the exchanger and then rapidly melting the frozen layer which is formed, and the fan auto clean “Fan Robo.” The “outdoor unit heat exchanger auto cleaning feature” blows dust out and away from the unit’s interior by reversing fan rotation and follows with a “Frost Wash” clean. These cleaning feature innovations contribute to the suppression of airflow reduction and reduction of wasted electricity. In addition, the indoor unit comes in a compact size, less than 800 millimeters in total width, while achieving greater energy-saving performance. It was these innovations that led the “Shirokuma-kun” Primium X Series to be awarded the prize.

Hitachi-Johnson Controls Air Conditioning continues to pursue energy efficiency for the further advancement of air conditioning technology.

We are looking forward to The Energy Conservation Award ceremony to be held at Tokyo Big Sight on Wednesday, January 29, 2020.

The award winning room air conditioner “Shirokuma-kun” Premium X Series will be displayed on panels at the award corner of the ENEX2020 energy and environment exhibition in Tokyo. In addition, we will exhibit the award-winning product at the Hitachi booth during the HVAC&R Japan 2020 heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and refrigerating expo, to be held from March 3, 2020 in Japan.