Energy Auditing and Conservation for Educational Buildings: a Case Study on Princess Sumaya University for Technology

Abstract

This paper introduces shortcut and effective approaches for energy auditing and conservation for educational buildings with application to Princess Sumaya University for Technology. The building electricity is significantly covered by a photovoltaic system, which is included in the building assessments and solutions. The short and simplified computations of the Normalized Performance Indicator of the building have shown fair performance, but some conservation opportunities are still possible. Two feasible energy conservation approaches are presented; the first is by optimization of the operating times of 357 air conditioners in the building using a Genetic Algorithm optimizer. Rigorous effort was done to get an accurate relationship between the comfortable time spans and the average temperatures to ensure the users’ convenience with considering their willingness to exceed the pre-selected optimized time span. Nineteen scenarios over 6 months have attained an average saving of 12.5%, which leads to a payback period of 9.27 years. The second approach is by ThermaCote® building insulation, which attains 38% cost savings with a combined payback period of 19.16 years, including external replacement. Although the existing photovoltaic system supplies a considerable free energy proportion and reduces the billing cost, the proposed two methods have improved the normalized performance indicator from the “fair” range in the existing situation to the “good” range.