Air-Conditioning for Green Universities

Abstract

AbstractUniversity is one of the highest energy consumptions among commercial buildings because the university has high load consumption. So, strategic management of energy saving in universities needs to be considered to reduce costs and energy consumption. Actually, there are many methods to save electricity consumption in university (community load system) from electrical sides and building design construction and human behaviors. Another thing is that energy consumption can be reduced by making green university. Some methods that can reduce energy in university are using conservation voltage reduction methods, utilizing IoT devices and smart technology instead of outdated electrical equipment, and installing renewable energy technology such as solar PV on campus. This paper reviews some methods that can save energy consumption and electricity bills as a background. The cost-effectiveness analysis was done by installing individual AC in universities. The experiment was done over 15 days with 8 h per day and energy savings can be found in 10,624 kWh with a cost-saving was 45,683 Baht for 15 days. The payback period was 1.6 years. According to these results, individual air-conditioning systems can be used instead of chiller systems in universities to save energy. This is the way of making the university become a green campus and sustainable.