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.