In this section of the final essay, electricityconsumption in the URS building will be considered to identify potential areasof electricity wastage. URS is one of the academic buildings of the Universityof Reading. At the moment, this building operates 24 hours a day as a studyspace (University of Reading Sustainability Portal, 2017).
In general,electrical energy is consumed for lighting and equipment such as computers, copiersand printers, lifts, etc., in this building. As shown in figure 1below, electricity consumption in this building depends on the time of day. Ingeneral, electricity use was significantly greater during the daytime than atnight.
Moreover, Harris (2017) stated that occupants have a significant impacton energy consumption in buildings. Therefore, data for the occupants of thisbuilding for the 16 October 2017, as taken from the University of Reading, willbe compared as independent variables using the regression analysis method againstelectricity consumption to identify electricity wastage in URS. Figure 1 presents the electricityconsumption and average occupancy in URS for 16 October 2017. The maximumelectrical energy consumption on this date was 66.5 kWh at 2 pm; at this time therewere, on average, 185 people in the building.
It is not the top value for thisday. The minimum consumption of electricity amounted to 26.25 kW/Hr at halfpast four in the morning when the average occupancy of building was 1. As shown in figure 1, at 6 pm approximately 121 people left the building;however, electricity consumption did not decrease as drastically as theoccupancy of URS at this point. Despite the URS building being almost empty,electrical power consumption was equal to 43.25 kWh at this time. At 6 pm, therewas an average of only five people still in the building, possibly only staff. Theelectricity consumption was less only by 7% than that at 5:30 pm when thebuilding occupancy was 145 people.
After a 6:30 pm the building was almost empty, but theelectricity consumption only decreased slowly until midnight. Perhaps thelighting and the computers were in the on position, despite the building beingempty. When the occupancy of thebuilding was zero electrical consumption was equal to 27.75 kW/h, for instance atfour o’clock in the morning of 16 October, so after 6 pm on this day, ifcomputers and lighting that were not used were switched off as soon as theoccupancy of the building decreased significantly then the power consumptioncould be reduced by 36% in the evening of this day, or by up to 15.5 kW/h.Additionally, in this building all the lighting,including the toilets, are turned on all day because they are being switched onor off manually.
In order to remove the electricity waste after 6pm on 16th of October 2017, the following can be undertaken:- to install occupancy sensors for lighting. This type of sensor canswitch on lights automatically when motion is detected and switch off whenmotion is not identified (Levition, 2018). This is particularly important intoilets and corridors.- staff should check the occupancy of the building especially in theevening and night. If there are not many students and occupants, they shouldswitch off all equipment that is not being used.- to consider putting a table lamp at each studyspace.
Set up rules for students thatafter finishing their work they should turn off such a table lamp;- to use computers which can be set to automatically turn off if they havenot been logged on to for an hour.
