Saudi Arabia has been subsidizing residential energy prices for decades, drawing on its vast oil reserves. Meanwhile, electricity consumption has been steadily increasing by nearly 8% annually in the past 10 years with energy consumption per capita 3.6 times higher than the world’s average. As a result, and without a mandatory energy building code, 70% of Saudi Arabian homes are today not insulated, consuming nearly 52% of electrical power generated. A critical factor in determining the overall energy consumption of residential Saudi homes is the envelope dominated cooling load. Constructing building envelope assemblies – to optimize thermal insulating properties – is challenging in Saudi Arabia as most small to mid-size local design firms do not have access to a database library of certified building materials. Determining a building envelope’s energy performance requires energy modeling skills and tools not readily available to these firms. This has resulted in squandering significant amounts of electrical energy. An energy modeling software program is developed that is a KSA-specific, user-friendly, online and free graphical user interface (GUI) for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) EnergyPlus software, with an integrated database library of local building materials. The software enables local practitioners to evaluate alternative building envelope assemblies and the relative energy efficiency between them. Encouraging the use of energy modeling for envelopes will encourage local manufacturing and sourcing of high-end materials. This paper will present the details of the methodologies used for the software’s development and design, along with result validation using real-life examples.
Citation: ASHRAE Papers CD: 2014 ASHRAE Winter Conference, New York, NY
Product Details
- Published:
- 2014
- Number of Pages:
- 8
- File Size:
- 1 file , 2.6 MB
- Product Code(s):
- D-NY-14-C037
