Himdan, Abdusalam

Project Title

New Architectural Approach in Reducing Electricity Consumption in Libyan Residential Sector

Abstract

The design of a building should be responsible for providing a high level of comfort as well and seek to reduce energy consumption. In the summer time of the hot climate regions such as the south of Libya the temperature can regularly reach 48°C. In addition buildings can be subjected to a high intensity of solar gain and hence cooling of the building is very important. As demand in thermal comfort of buildings rise increasingly, the energy consumption is correspondingly increasing.

For example, in France, the energy consumption of buildings has increased by 30% during the last 30 years. Housing and student accommodation buildings are responsible for the consumption of approximately 46% of all energies and approximately 19% of the total CO2 emissions. Nowadays, thermal energy storage systems are essential for reducing dependency on fossil fuels and then contributing to a more efficient environmentally benign energy use (Kuznik et al., 2011). On the other hand in hot climates like Libya's the residential sector represents the highest share of electrical energy demand at around 36% of the total, due to increased use of air conditioning, where up to 7% of the total national consumption in Libya was created by demand for air conditioning (REAOL, 2013)

Therefore, this research will focus on controlling the customers' air conditioning in order to reduce and reshape the electrical power consumption curve.

Supervisors

Dr Edward Owens and Dr David Jenkins

Contact

Email: ah221@hw.ac.uk