Energy saving opportunities and challenges (case study: Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS)

The Building Energy Index (BEI) reported for Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) shows that the campus has not performed as low energy building. Inefficient electric fixtures installed and low awareness levels on energy conservation among occupants are consider being the major cause. The aim of this paper is to investigate the root cause of the excessive electricity consumption of UTP buildings and analyzing the impact of human behavior. Two surveys: building survey and questionnaire survey are proposed to achieve these objectives. The building survey is used to gather information pertaining energy consumption in UTP. Due to the restricted availability of data, 3 buildings namely Building 13, 14 and Pocket C were selected to represent the whole UTP. The questionnaires were distributed among the end-users of the three buildings to determine information regarding energy consumption from their perspective. The results established that building survey, energy apportions and performance monitoring approach is a suitable method to investigate the root cause and potential solution to retrofit the UTP buildings. Finally, by identifying all the possible challenges, opportunities on energy saving is identified for retrofitting to significantly reduce the overall BEI of UTP buildings