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Improving Operational Strategies of an Institutional Building in Kuwait
Abstract
The Building and Energy Technologies Department
(BET) of the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research has
pledged to achieve 10% reduction in buildings energy
consumption by the year 2005. Working in line with the
Kuwaiti government that highly recognizes the national
and international concerns to reduce global warming
gases, BET formulated its 5-year strategic goal. Efforts
were concentrated on buildings with partial occupancy,
namely office buildings, where it was found that
inefficient operation strategies were undertaken by
building operators. Generally, office buildings were
operated without taking the occupancy schedules into
consideration. This actually created a great opportunity to
reform common operation strategies and increase
buildings energy efficiency, which is a step forward to
achieve the set goal. This paper demonstrates the findings
of a pilot study of an office/institutional building, located
in Kuwait that targeted mainly reducing its energy
consumption by modifying its operation strategies. The
study focused on the major end user systems of the
building main source of energy that is electricity, namely
the air-conditioning, and lighting systems. It was
estimated that for the base year, which was selected to be
year 1999, the recommended operation strategies would
save 21% of the annual energy consumption. The annual
savings in electrical energy totaled over 2800 kWhr,
which is equivalent to $18,400 (O&MS). Reflecting the
savings on the national level and for buildings of similar
type and occupancy pattern, it is estimated that the nation
would save over $70 million due to the heavy government
subsidy. In addition, the power plants emissions of CO2
will be reduced by 749 millions kg.
Citation
Al-Ragom, F. (2002). Improving Operational Strategies of an Institutional Building in Kuwait. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu); Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /5189.