Electricity conservation opportunities within private university campuses in Bangladesh

Abstract

The mushroom growth of universities in the developing economies, in particular, is believed to be a key contributor to the relentless aggravation in the overall demand for electricity. Moreover, the large university campuses are often compared to cities whereby the associated electricity-consumption within these campuses are also referred to account for a bulk of the total urban electricity consumption. Thus, conservation of electricity within the campus has become a core agenda of universities in quest of ensuring respective campus sustainability. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to highlight and recommend the cost-effective and best-practiced techniques applied to conserve electricity within the private universities in Bangladesh. As part of the methodology, a cost–benefit analysis of electricity conservation is put forward in the context of a case study of the North South University, the largest private university in Bangladesh. The results from the analyses imply that proper implementation of the electricity conservation and efficiency enhancement techniques within the campus can effectively cut down the total electricity bills by almost one-third and simultaneously account for a 5% reduction in the total electricity demand within the campus.