Effect of Building Orientation on Energy Conservation

Nigeria today faces serious challenge in providing adequate energy to meet the needs of her citizenry. Efforts are currently geared towards generation of more energy to ease the problem. While these efforts are commendable, it is equally desirable to explore ways of minimizing consumption of generated energy. This work has thus examined the impact of building orientation on the energy demand and thus proffers its appropriate orientation. A survey was carried out in lbadan which is the largest metropolis city in West Africa. The orientation of built houses in various setting such as Government Reserved Areas, Public/Commercial settings and local dweller settings were studied to determine their conformity with expected standard of North-South orientation of the building length. From the study it was observed that a sizeable percentage of the buildings with the survey were placed longitudinally in the East-West direction implying that more energy may have to be expended in cooling inside the building. The defaults are more pronounced in the local dwellers. In many of the cases considered in this study, the defaults were enhanced by the road networks. This study established the need for more education on building orientation as well as road network planning. This will cut down energy consumption in cooling inside a building.