Conference Paper

Proceedings of ASim Conference 2012: 1st Asia conference of IBPSA-China, Japan, Korea

An evaluation of the total energy consumption of educational buildings: prototype case studies in Saudi Arabia

Hasim Altan, Hazzaa Faisal Alshareef

Abstract: The global contribution from buildings towards energy consumption, both residential and commercial, has steadily increased, reaching figures between 20% and 40%. In terms of commercial buildings, educational buildings are one of the main components of this sector. Educational buildings are a unique type of facility which can house a large number of dwellers for the purpose of learning, propagation of knowledge and the development of skills for life. Therefore, the assessment of the energy efficiency of educational buildings has become a matter of particular interest to educational organisations, environmentalists and governments. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), owing to the speedy growth in the infrastructure and construction sector, prototype educational buildings were designed with little attempt to exploit the natural resources such as ventilation and daylight in order to achieve a better indoor environments. The aim of this paper is to assess the energy consumption of current Higher Technical Institutes buildings in different cities presenting the climate zones in the KSA. This evaluation will investigate the energy consumption of these buildings and the appropriateness and response of their current design to the climate conditions in each region. A whole building energy simulation was used to investigate the sensitivity of various factors affecting energy use and a detailed computer model of a typical building in different cities in the KSA have been constructed using EnergyPlus with DesignBuilder as an interface. The results revealed that the energy consumption in this building differs significantly according to the project locations, which was also reflected by a significant variation in each city. Furthermore, it was found that the variations in the total energy consumption between the cities were a result of the consumption of the cooling and heating systems.
Pages: 165 - 172
Paper: