Energy management in the buildings of a university campus in Saudi Arabia — A case study

This paper presents the details of the installation of an energy management system in the buildings of a typical university campus in Saudi Arabia and the consequent reduction in the electrical energy consumption. The electrical load demand in the universities is getting increased recently at an accelerated pace because of the rapid expansion of the campus infrastructure due to the increase in the intake of students, starting of new courses, research centers and laboratories. The majority of the electrical energy consumption in the universities in Saudi Arabia is for air-conditioning and lighting purposes. The installed building energy management system (BMS) continuously monitors the electrical load demand of the air handling units (AHUs) and the room lighting in the buildings and reduces the load demand through the appropriate setting of the thermostats of the AHUs based on the work schedule in a day and the On/Off control of lights based on the occupancy in different rooms through the Ethernet from a remotely located server room. The preliminary investigations reveal that significant reduction in load demand can be achieved in any university campus in Saudi Arabia through the implementation of BMS, thus contributing to the reduction in the domestic oil consumption of the country. If majority of the universities in the country set up BMS in their campuses, then it would be possible for the electrical utility to utilize the real-time meter data, technology-enabled dynamic pricing, and deterministic direct load control for the energy management in such campuses. The paper also highlights the future trend in the implementation of BMS in universities in which the demand response can be effectively utilized in the university DSM by having a secure campus area network that are enabled by high bandwidth, two-way, end-to-end communications in a smart grid environment.