Energy Efficiency in a New University Campus: Preliminary Findings

One of Malaysia’s national energy policy’s objectives is to promote efficient utilization of energy and the elimination of wasteful and non-productive patterns of energy consumption. The government wishes to intensify energy efficiency (EE) initiatives in a broad range of areas, including in government buildings. University Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP), a Malaysian public institution of higher learning, has been chosen for an action research in the implementation of an energy efficiency program, in line with the government’s aspiration. This highly populated organization was an ideal selection for an energy consumption and silent waste research. Research objective was to identify areas of possible energy waste within the Campus. To achieve the objective, 2 projects were selected: one was to reduce energy use of chillers and the other was to find if there is any wastage with wrong setting of luminous flux in specific areas. For the first project, the staging method was adopted, where chillers will be loaded with 15 minutes intervals and for the second, luminous flux was set according to government body’s requirement to attain energy saving as initial stage findings showed that luminous flux setting was more than what is required. The results from just these 2 projects demonstrated, that UniMAP was able to save approximately 53,000 kWh of electricity within the research duration. From the preliminary results, it is apparent that more energy wastage analysis within the campus should be carried out in order to maximize potential savings that can be achieved in the future.


Introduction
The Malaysian government's commitment is to promote energy efficiency, as seen in the many government policies and regulations in place.In the line with the government's aspiration, UniMAP started its "Sustainable Campus" program.The first challenge was to find and sustain an active, diverse, and motivated team dedicated to working towards environmental justice and sustainability; volunteers who would selflessly contribute time and engage in the project.The challenge was overcome after the Green Campus workshop, held in June 2012.Staff and student came forward to be chosen as leaders on accepted directions for the study.Result of workshop was impressive and few directions on sustainability study were accepted.Currently the program comprises of 12 Groups and namely: 1) People.
2) Land and Water.
University management has chosen the way volunteers to create own projects towards sustainability, although there are many Higher Education Sustainability Assessment Tools to follow.All groups' initiatives regarding projects have been taken into consideration.Some have failed in early stages but some of them completed successfully which other Higher Education Institutions can adopt.
One year on, overall outputs from groups were reviewed.Reports indicated that 4 meetings were conducted each month with various groups; some providing challenging ideas and its benefit to Campus and some with slow or no contribution.In this article, unexpected findings from Energy Management Group will be discussed.UniMAP's campuses are spread out in various locations in Perlis and remote support departments are located in the State of Kedah and in Kuala Lumpur as well.Amongst these campuses, the new Campus in Pauh, Perlis, was evaluated for sustainability study.

Problem Definition
This paper addresses to reduce energy wastage by utilizing the ground-level understanding and knowledge of University Academicians who are in the field of energy conservation and thereby have an eye for spotting silent energy wastage.
The managements plays a big role in the projects success and how the university might improve its standing.The two-part movement is important, that is, grass-root level and management level.They are both bottom up and top down in that they involve efforts to change.Without the top-down initiatives or shared awareness combined with motivation, possibility of academicians being impartial to the project can result.The aim of this study is to understand how energy usage is managed in UniMAP and whether other requirements by Government departments are pursued.Requirements and suggestions were chosen at random.The specific goal of this study is to show how measurements and data play an important role to make conscious and bring to fore unrealized energy wastage.Collected data from these measurements will assist the organization on suitable actions that will reduce the waste and conform to requirements.
UniMAP's Sustainable Group members believe, much has to be done, since there is commitment by Malaysian Government to reduce carbon footprint up to 40% by 2020, (United Nations Climate Change Conference, 2009) and Universities or any organization should start implementing green technologies and products in their premises to achieve the target.As a known fact, implementing new technologies using green products are subjected to cost impact.However, it can be done, if proof of concept is presented to convince management that new implementations will result in more benefit than current ones.In any organization, electricity usage should be analyzed to identify unwanted excess or unnecessary usage, which would pave the way to find waste and initiate solutions to reduce."Over 24 percent of the energy in commercial buildings is used for Heating, Ventilation and Cooling (HVAC).Of this energy, more than half goes to building cooling.In larger buildings, chillers are often used for cooling.Chillers are a type of cooling equipment that produces chilled water to cool air.Making your cooling systems as efficient as possible is an important component of reducing building operating costs.This article addresses energy saving opportunities in chillers" (Improving industrial productivity, through energy-efficient advancements, Progress Energy, US).This paper discusses 2 small projects carried out to reduce electricity consumption in UniMAP.

Operations and Building Maintenance in Malaysia
Implementing energy saving practices will greatly contribute toward reduction in electricity cost.The Energy Management Group of Sustainable Campus Team at UniMAP were highly motivated to improve operation method of chillers at the Campus, where results in change of practice reduced electricity usage.
Operational and maintenance cost of the building should not be combined, although both expenses are interconnected.To sustain the building performance and maintain the functionality, require investment.Maintenance cost is part of operation cost.Operation in the building will affect the escalation of maintenance cost."Sustainable Campus Energy Management Team" has taken data for CLST and CLWI for 10 days each.Data has been collected from electricity meter from each plant.As indicated in Chart-3, selected normal usage days are chosen for measurement.
Many factors contribute to the increase or reduction of energy usage based on consumption of components in the building.Meter reading captured was for the entire building electricity usage, inclusive of the locations where multiple chillers are used as mentioned in Chart-2.Statistics shows that electricity expenses for previous months prior to implementation of staging strategy showed significantly higher.

Setting up Illumination Level
Second project, which carried out, by "Sustainable Campus Management Team" is set area illumination level to JKR recommendations.As an example, the recommendations by Malaysian Standards 1525 (MS 1525: Code of Practice on Energy Efficiency and Use of Renewable Energy for Nonresidential Building) on area illumination level seems are yet to be implemented in UniMAP.School of Electrical Systems Engineering of UniMap, "Sustainable Campus Energy Management Team" randomly had chosen corridors, rooms and laboratories on first floors of 2 blocks for illumination level measurement purpose.It is used mostly 2 types of lamps in all area.For example, it has been used T8 and T10 fluorescent lamps in most hostels, libraries, classrooms, labs and corridors, while only in some meeting rooms it has been used compact fluorescent lamps (CFL).The cost-effectiveness of energy-efficient options depends on the intensity of their use and on local electricity costs.Energy efficiency and long life make up for higher first costs most quickly in areas where electricity costs are highest and in applications where maintenance costs are high and usage is most intense.When choosing track lighting, it's important to consider where and how lamps going to be used.Each type of lamp is appropriate in different applications (A).Lamp types-halogen, compact fluorescent, metal halide, and light-emitting diode-also differ in efficacy, life.
Higher Education Institutions should consider in detail when they are building new campuses or change current lamps to more efficient lamps.Choosing right lights may safe a lot in long term, if especially organization is big, like UniMAP.
In project 2, measurement finding showed that, illumination level was almost double than recommended level in selected areas of UniMAP.Data below shows illumination level differences between current situation in UniMap at Pauh Campus (August, 2013), and recommended levels by MS 1525 and JKR (Jabatan Kerja Raya-Department of Public Works).• Energy consumption after reducing the lux level: 483.69 kWh.The above demonstrates that if UniMap's "Sustainable Campus Energy Management Team" is able to implement the recommended illumination level in all areas of University, savings could be more than ten fold.

Conclusion
Within testing period of time, it has been saved approximately 53000 kWh electricity, which equals to 36.5 tons of Carbon.These studies were first step to do much bigger researches and finding indicated there are much more things to do and there are number of hidden problems.These 2 small studies have encouraged management of University and staffs to do more researchers towards sustainability.
The first step to foster a culture of sustainability at University Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP), is to change mindset of staff and students to be environment conscious.This can only be achieved when the policy makers of the University take steps to strengthen its commitment to incorporate energy-saving practices.It is seen that, though there are many architects from some of the world's finest schools, but outputs from their designs towards "green" buildings are small in numbers.It is essential that staff and students be unison in their vision and aspiration to work and study in a Sustainable environment.When that is achieved, transformation can take place.The advantage to start at education camps is because students' observation on their surroundings provides acumen on specific areas and out-of-box mitigation ideas towards sustainability approach."Higher education has unique academic freedom and the critical mass and diversity of skills to develop new ideas, to comment on society and its challenges, and to engage in bold experimentation in sustainable living" (The Critical Role of Higher Education in Creating a Sustainable Future, by Anthony D. Cortese).Colleges and Universities have an obligation to lead the community.Therefore, the main aspect was agreed upon for development of sustainability to put things into motion.
The result of this case study proves, that there could be many other possible hidden situations where there is waste of University resources in Campus.The new library building that was launched officially in February 2012 is one of the locations in this study.It was expected for some of the research findings to be implemented considered in some aspects of the newly built campus.However, it was found, that there are still many areas for further improvement.It would be a good move for the University, to have a Manager-in-Charge to overlook and control energy consumption, as UniMAP consumes approximately 130,000kWh energy in a month and it is on the rise.Since financial funding and aid from Malaysian Government is in place, the expenses incurred on energy usage may not be taken as a major concern by the university.This offers an ideal setting for case studies to be conducted.Hence, the importance, of feedback from staff with growing recognition to identify which energy efficiency measures we want to go after will help towards the sustainability.
The scale of the challenge in finding visible issues in campus is big, as it consumes personal time and thus, limited lectures volunteering to do extra tasks.Nevertheless, it was fortunate that there are 12 highly motivated teams of Sustainable Campus of UniMAP who encourage university staffs and students to share their ideas towards to sustainability and assist to solve any issues to carry out studies, which contribute to achieving sustainability in campus.It can be concluded that, more measures should be done in field of Energy, Internal Environment Quality, Sustainable Site Planning, Transportation and Water efficiency, since case study results have lead to reduction in energy use at the campus.UniMAP is large education organization; and it is evident that there is no control on energy usage at present.To tackle this issue, role of energy managers are important and audits must be carried.Investment of some sort is sometimes inevitable on the path of making changes, but forget not, ignorance could be more expensive than the investment.

Annotation
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