Thanks, that confirms what I've heard previously.
As far as turning off the breaker, the cooling season here is typically only late May or later until late August. I've heard that the cost of keeping the breaker on is about $5/month. I'll gladly flip the breaker off to save $40 or more annually.
As well, the compressor can burn out if the unit is run with the winter cover on. Having the breaker off ensures no one turns the unit on accidentally.
There should be NO power consumed by it with the breaker on if there is no call for cooling, zero savings. Even if it's some fancy unit with its own microcontroller, should only consume very low mA which is less, probably much less as a %, than $1/year.
I'd appreciate it if you could link to a source of information to the contrary?
Winter cover? There's winter here, snow, ice, etc, no cover. Does the owner's manual state it needs one? It doesn't unless you live in an unusual climate where there are episodes where it snows overnight and ices it up, but then warms up so fast the next day that it might need to run before the ice melts off.
If it is accidentally turned on in winter, it won't run because it's colder than what the thermostat is set to. I suppose there is some kind of terrorist event where someone fiddles with the thermostat, but this is a very strange kind of theory, that someone would expect that to happen.
Just saying', I don't know about you but I can't recall a time in my life that it was cold out so heat was needed, and then (if I subscribed to having a cover over it) that I had some urge to turn the AC on while it was cold outside so it was covered. If you have children that might do this, I would mount the thermostat higher on the wall and/or consider a tamper proof box over it.
Whole topic makes no sense unless vital details have been omitted.
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