Investigation of energy efficiency opportunities and assessment of renewable energy technologies for a college in the rural area of Pakistan: A Case study of Namal College

Energy efficiency of buildings has lately become a major issue because of growing concerns about CO2, greenhouse gas emissions and scarcity of fossil fuels (Perez-Lombard, Ortiz and Pout 2008). Buildings worldwide account for high 40% of global energy consumption (Krarti, 2012; Bribian et al., 2009). If the energy consumed in manufacturing steel, aluminum, cement and glass used in the construction of buildings is measured, the consumption would be more than 50% (WBCSD 2009). Energy efficiency of buildings plays an essential role in designing a new facility, assessing its energy consumption as per design and application of energy efficient technologies during construction and operation of the building. Pakistan is facing the worst energy crises. The gap between energy supply and demand is increasing day by day. A large number of remotely located villages in Pakistan are without electricity. The energy issue has reached its peak because neither the new generation plants have been installed nor the energy conservation has been focused, so Identification of new power generation sources is important. Similarly, the more important issue is to conserve the energy and to use energy efficient appliances. Besides, reducing the amount of energy demand is a good way to save money, there are several other benefits to reducing power consumption. The burden on the national grid can be decreased substantially by using the less power consuming appliances, hence Small changes can lead to a significant difference in our overall energy consumption. A pilot study was undertaken to inspect the energy-efficient approaches and how they relate to energy efficiency improvement of one of leading colleges of Pakistan, has been proposed in the first phase whereas the second phase includes the same load electrified by utilizing the solar resource. The building of Namal College selected for the detailed study of energy auditing, consumption and conservation is located in a rural area of Pakistan, near the city of Mianwali. The aim of this project is to recommend the best approach to investigate the energy usage, to reduce power consumption and wholly or partly divert the contribution of expensive diesel to a renewable power source. Initially, data has been obtained followed by the nomination of high energy consuming sectors for energy conservation task. An analysis of electricity generation using renewable energy source was also conducted by using two simulation software which is HOMER and RET screen. Here RETScreen is used to estimate the numbers of units of solar panels and the area required to install them while Homer is used for technical and financial aspects.

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