A STUDY OF ENERGY WASTAGE IN NUS COMPUTER LAB

Abstract

As Singapore aims to transform itself into a smart nation where people live fulfilling and meaningful lives with technology connecting everyone and everything seamlessly, the society begins to witness the growing network of sensors and smart devices infiltrating everyone’s daily lives.

With this smart nation vision in mind and a paradigm shift towards technological innovation, it emphasises the need to adopt the state-of-the-art technologies like smart sensors and smart plugs to enable sustainable and comfortable living. Lighting loads constitute a significant portion of the building energy consumption and with rising plug loads especially from personal computers (PC), it highlights the importance of reducing PC and lighting energy consumption. Therefore, this paper studies the energy consumption of computer and lighting loads in a computer lab in the National University of Singapore (NUS) and uses smart sensors to determine occupancy, thereafter relating occupancy data with energy consumption to identify and measure energy wastage which would have been the potential energy savings.

Objective measurements were conducted using smart plugs to measure energy consumption and using smart sensors to identify user presence and lighting usage. Firstly, it was found that lights were switched on every day continuously even on weekends, and some computers were switched on for several days without being shut down. Secondly, greater energy wastage was discovered during non-school hours and weekends as compared to school hours and weekdays. Lastly, this study proved that occupancy sensing facilitates huge energy savings for both lighting and computer loads.

As such, the research findings advocate to schools and offices the importance of using occupancy sensors and smart plugs to reduce PC and lighting energy consumption. In addition to the use of smart plugs and sensors, the paper provided recommendations such as implementing lighting switch configurations to reduce lighting energy consumption and putting the computers to sleep automatically after a stated period of time to reduce PC energy consumption.