Thermal modelling and simulation of a laboratory building for cooling energy consumption

Abstract

Buildings in Saudi Arabia are distinguished by a severe excess of electrical usage as they consume 80% of the electricity produced. About 50% of that consumption is due to air conditioning use. The objective of this paper is to estimate energy demand for cooling a governmental building and explore the effect of necessary measures that need to be taken to rationalize the building's energy consumption. It addresses the modeling and simulation to detect how the indoor temperature is affected by changing outdoor temperature and to inspect the effect of various parameters on the indoor temperature. The case under study is the Communication Laboratory Room located in the College of Engineering at King Khalid University in Saudi Arabia. The model includes an air conditioner (plant model), controlled by an On/Off switch (controller model), to cool the laboratory room (environment model) to a desired set temperature. The results are used to investigate the parameters that need to be enhanced in order to reduce the total energy demand. The processes for creating model structure and algorithm design used here can be applied to other building sectors and more multipart models.