Impact of movement control order implementation on electricity consumption: A case study of university buildings

The Covid-19 pandemic has first been identified in China at the end of 2019 and later has spread worldwide. In Malaysia, Covid-19 cases have increased drastically in March 2020 that caused the Government to implement a Movement Control Order (MCO) starting 18 March 2020 to curb the outbreak which has affected all sectors in the country including higher education institutions. The objective of this paper is to present the impact of MCO implementation on the electricity consumption on the university buildings particularly at Universiti Malaysia Perlis. The methodology processes involve comparing the energy usage in 2019 as baseline data with usage in 2020 as the assessed data. These data then been analyzed for every 3 months or quarterly for reporting. Based on the results, MCO implementation has shown positive impact to the energy conservation where 3,023 MWh of electrical energy has been reduced in 2020 which is 25.72% less than the same period in 2019. This condition has been extremely beneficial to the university’s operations where RM 1.369 million of electricity bill has been saved. In the aspect of environmental sustainability, the amount of energy reduction is equivalent to more than 2,000 tonnes of CO2 avoidance at rated value 0.694 tCO2 per MWh. As a result from energy reduction, the BEI performance of the buildings has improved from 3-Star (moderately efficient) to 4-Star (efficient).