MEPS explained: the floor under every aircon sold here

Minimum Energy Performance Standards set the lowest efficiency a model may have and still be put on sale in Singapore. Nothing about it is a score. It is a condition of being supplied at all. NEA states the position without qualification: supplying or importing a regulated good that does not meet the prescribed requirements is prohibited, and the power sits in Part III Division 1 of the Energy Conservation Act.

The scope is drawn narrowly and by machine type. Regulated household aircon covers casement and window units up to 8.8 kW, split-type units up to 17.6 kW in both inverter and non-inverter form, and single-phase portable units with one exhaust duct up to 12 kW. Three-phase VRF equipment carries its own standard on a different measure. A machine outside those definitions is outside the rule.

The prohibition binds whoever supplies the machine, not whoever owns it. A raised floor does not make an installed system unlawful and creates no obligation to replace anything. Servicing, repair and continued use are untouched. What changes is what a retailer may put on the shelf tomorrow.

Registration and the printed label are the other half of the same scheme, and they are a separate obligation under the Mandatory Energy Labelling Scheme. Refrigerant limits are a third regime again, with their own dates and their own measure. This page is about the standard a model had to clear before any of that paperwork could exist.

On a single split the floor is the 4-tick threshold. On a multi-split it is the 5-tick threshold. Those are not merely close to the tick bands. They are the same numbers.

Since 1 April 2025 a single split has needed a COP of at least 4.86, weighted for a modulating model, with standby power no higher than 18 watts. A multi-split has needed 5.50 on the same measure, with standby scaled to the number of indoor and outdoor units. Casement and window machines sit at 3.78. A single-phase portable with one exhaust duct sits at 3.0.

Set those four figures against NEA's published tick bands and a pattern falls out. 4.86 is where the 4-tick band for a single split begins. 5.50 is where 5-tick begins for a multi-split. 3.78 is where 2-tick begins for a casement machine, and 3.0 is where 1-tick begins for a portable. In every format the minimum lands exactly on the lower edge of a band.

The bands underneath are not thinly stocked. They are marked N/A on NEA's own table. A single split has no 1-tick, 2-tick or 3-tick band left in existence. A multi-split has nothing below 5-tick at all. The scale did not empty because manufacturers lost interest in the bottom of it. It emptied because the law came up to meet it.

Aircon came under the standard on 1 September 2011, pitched at what was then the 2-tick level. It has been lifted four times since, and NEA publishes the whole sequence as a dated implementation record rather than leaving it to be inferred.

Read that record as a series of deletions rather than a series of targets. A raise does not make the models below it poor value or discourage anybody from buying them. It removes them. The manufacturer withdraws the range, the retailer clears the last of the stock, and a band that had products in it last year has none in it this year.

One provision decides when any of this reaches a shop floor. Each raise comes with a transitional window for goods already in the country. For the April 2025 change NEA gave suppliers one year, ending 31 March 2026, to clear stock that did not meet the new standard. From 1 April 2026 every regulated model has to be registered and compliant before it may be supplied.

That window shut recently enough to catch out anything a shopper reads secondhand. A review, a forum thread or a retailer page written before April 2026 can describe machines that are no longer supplied here at all. Guidance along the lines of saving money on a 3-tick split was ordinary advice once. It now points at a category that cannot lawfully be sold.

On a multi-split the count has stopped carrying information. Every system 2, 3 and 4 on sale clears 5.50, because nothing below that may be supplied. A salesperson presenting five ticks as a property of one particular model is describing the entry requirement for the entire category.

Push back when a recommendation in that category rests on the tick count and nothing else. The band has a floor and no ceiling, so the models sitting in it are not level with one another. Separating them means asking for the efficiency figure each model measures, which is a different exercise from reading the label and is set out where the metric is explained.

On a single split the count still separates something, because two bands survive. What it separates is a machine at the legal minimum from a machine clearly above it. That is a narrower claim than treating four ticks as the budget tier. There is no tier below it to be the budget one.

Ticks also stop comparing once formats differ, because each format is anchored to its own floor. The portable scale has two bands, and the top one begins at 3.25. A single split cannot be supplied at all under 4.86. Two ticks of apparent difference hide a much larger real one, and no arithmetic performed on tick counts will recover it. Across formats, compare the ratio and ignore the label.

The question worth asking is not how many ticks a budget reaches. It is how far above the current minimum a machine sits, and how long that position will still look defensible.

A unit bought at the minimum met the lowest standard permitted on the day it was sold. That is not a defect and it is often the right trade. It is worth naming because the interval between raises has run from two years to six, and a split system comfortably outlives that. Buying at the bottom of the surviving range means owning something that reads as the bottom for most of its service life.

None of this creates a duty on an owner. The standard binds supply. An installed machine stays lawful, keeps whatever cover it came with, and can be serviced and repaired normally however far the minimum climbs afterwards. Anybody invoking a standards change to argue that a working system must be replaced is selling rather than advising, and the argument has no legal content behind it.

Where the floor does reach an existing owner is model continuity. Ranges are withdrawn rather than re-rated when a threshold moves, and the ones withdrawn are those nearest the old minimum. That surfaces years later as a discontinued range and a longer wait on a control board, which is a parts question rather than a compliance one.

Efficiency is one input among several, and it is rarely the input that goes wrong. Capacity matched to the room, a condenser sited where it can actually reject heat, and an installation done properly move a running bill further than a step inside a single band. The aircon buying checklist covers that ground. This page settles a narrower thing: what the bottom of the scale means, and why it is not where it used to be.

• •Ask which efficiency figure the model measures, not how many ticks it carries. The band confirms it cleared. The figure says by how much.
• •Ask whether the exact model quoted is currently registered. Registration runs per model and has to be live for the machine to be supplied.
• •Treat any tick claim in older material as undated until checked against what that format's bands are today.
• •On a system 2, 3 or 4, set the tick count aside as a comparison tool. Every option in front of you carries the same one.
• •If a retailer cannot produce the efficiency figure behind the band, the shortlist has been described rather than narrowed.