Confirmations are in:
a) The air-condition contains a heater that consumes average 80W for 40 minutes, 20W for 20 minutes each hour when in Standby.
b) The past two months of electrical bills reduces by about $50 by switching off the power to 2 units of condensers in the morning before leaving the house, and turning on only at night.
There is no confirmation whether this technology which require pre-heating the condenser is specific to Mitsubishi or across all Inverter-based aircon.
For me, this thread of investigations helped me identify the source of mysterious energy consumption in my house.
For people who are considering installing a new aircon, this is the moral of the story: the amount of standby power consumption need to be factored into the total cost of installing the aircon. If one were to do that, you will realize that over 5 years (the expected life of a condenser) aircon with this technology that requires pre-heating will be at least 20% more expensive than any other Inverter - you need to add in the standby energy consumed.
The other thing that I have learned in this investigation is: Singapore's green energy policies are still in stone-age. Manufacturers are conforming to standing policies that are not in tune with the global trends in energy policies. Our government has openly stated the support of green energy, but policies are in the infant stage. Unless citizens proactively encourage policy makers to step on the gas, we will end up being deceived by cleverly crafted advertisement. Unless you are prepared to switch on and off the mains power to the condenser everyday, you better make a wise choice and not take the image projected by advertisements at face value, and ended paying the bills.