Study on the Air Conditioning Cooling Load and Operational Practices within Glazed Buildings in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS

The centralized air conditioning system in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS is a large scale air conditioning application, in which the average monthly consumption reaches as high as 850,000 RTh. For such a huge amount of energy consumption, the system has vast potential for energy and cost saving. Therefore, a thorough study on the cooling load of the whole system should be performed to identify potential areas for energy and cost saving. The objective of the present study is to investigate the potential energy savings within the air conditioning system. The study is conducted by analyzing the system’s cooling load and the operational practices, both manually and by software simulation. For cooling load analysis, the effect of several design and operational variables towards building annual cooling energy are analyzed in terms of the building orientation, thermal insulation, night ventilation, window shading devices, infiltration and overcooling towards building annual cooling energy. On the operational side, building occupancy pattern is investigated. This involved analyzing the occupancy pattern during weekday and weekend as well as estimating the energy saving by isolating the unoccupied spaces. From the simulations’ results, implementation of windows blinds and shadings as well as providing night ventilation give a significant reduction of buildings’ annual cooling energy. For the operational practices, implementation of rooms’ scheduling for the air conditioning system will also result in a substantial reduction of building cooling load.