What determines the duty cycle of the A/C compressor?

[Lafiro]

Don't notice the difference? LOL stop kidding yourself.

So I took the diagnostic tool and plugged it into the car a few months ago. And I noticed something rather interesting.

At idle the engine is under little load, maybe 10%.

When the engine is in drive, but at a standstill, it jumps to around 27-30% load.

And when the A/C is being used, the load on the engine jumps to 42-52%(I forgot the exact amount)

Now, when you hit the gas, no matter how much you stomp on it, the A/C being ACTIVE will reduce 20-22% of the engine. Which to our 106hp engine means roughly 20-22housepower is gone because of it.

Don't believe me, test the car yourself when you know the A/C just kicked in, and use a nice scanning tool with graphs.

I tested this on my friends mercedes. He took it to the dyno, so we know its HP/torque. At the end, simple math equated that with his engine load raising just a few percent, we multiplied that by the horsepower put down/at the crank. Noticed, it was the exact 20-22horsepower of the engine that was being used.

This is why in our car that 20-22HP makes a really big difference, but in my friends Mercedes putting down 518 at the wheels, it really doesnt feel like anything is on at all.

This makes me really sad to know how weak this 1.5 engine is, but at the same time, happy that it does so good on gas, and thats why I own it. That and I like how it looks/drives! lol