A Study on Energy Efficiency ofUTP Academic Buildings

A lot of energy is used annually by UTP office building to cater the UTP staff
and ensure their comfort of working. The energy is mostly used to fulfill the
requirement and basic needs of the staff such as lighting, thermal comfort, and office
plug loads. Located in Malaysia, which has hot and humid climate causes the building
to receive unnecessary solar radiation which causes heat gain. Due to that,
improvements need to be made towards current condition of UTP building towards a
more energy efficient and environment friendly. The objective of the project is to
evaluate how far current UTP office buildings fulfill the building criteria that are
prescribed by the requirements in Code of Practice on Energy Efficiency and Use of
Renewable Energy for Non-Residential Building (MS 1525: 2007). Besides, it also aims
to provide recommendations that could be implemented to reduce energy consumption
through effective practices of efficient lighting and managing office plug loads. The
study is carried out by incorporating building energy survey together with lighting
system survey and office plug loads survey followed by data gathering and analysis.
The results obtained shows building energy performance index of UTP is higher than
the value set by MS 1525 guideline. UTP lighting system is found inefficient due to
high level intensity and illuminance produced by the lights. For office plug loads,
personal computer together with monitors results in the highest amount of energy
consumption annually. New recommendations are suggested in which could further
improve the energy efficiency of UTP office building. The recommendation for
building envelope is to reduce the heat transfer coefficient (U-value) which will reduce
the heating up of the office building. The recommendation for lighting system in the
other hand is by using more day lighting which will allow the reduction of operating
hours of the artificial lighting. For office plug loads, it is recommended that better
power management is implemented and more efficient equipment should be used to
replace the existing ones.