DEVELOPING A RESIDENTIAL ENERGY USAGE MODEL

Abstract

With the invasion of the building industry by the gadgets and technologies from the IT sector, building professionals are envisioning a future where household appliances can interact with each other and even other building elements in what experts term as the “internet of things”. While the current technology and the trajectory of computing power certainly allows the mentioned scenario to be a reality, there is a lack of research on the key knowledge needed to build such technologies. One such input is the energy consumption of residential appliances. This dissertation features a study that attempts to build a residential energy usage model by first benchmarking the power consumptions of the various appliances that are connected to plugs in homes. The Singapore Power Home Electric Audit was shortlisted as the leading tool in this category which would serve as a basis for comparison for the developed energy usage model. A field study is conducted in which a list of appliances is tested for their energy consumption. The Alternating Current Meter, data logger and AC core and the AC Clamp Meter were used to measure the mentioned energy consumption. An energy consumption survey was also conducted to ascertain the prevailing energy conserving attitudes in Singapore. The field study yielded evidence on the shortcomings of the Singapore Power Electricity Audit. The audit is found to have overestimated energy consumption by 36.17%. The methodology of the audit is also found to be flawed as the apparent power ratings are used, which does not represent the true work done by the appliances. The author then turns his attention to ascertaining the energy conservation attitude of Singaporeans. A survey was designed to find the awareness that Singapore residents have for energy conserving initiatives implemented by the government. It is found that while awareness for older schemes is considerably high, awareness for the new Mandatory Energy Labeling Scheme is limited. Lastly, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to analyze the household appliance purchasing decision of Singapore residents. It is found that the build quality is the most important consideration when consumes purchase appliances, while energy efficiency factored to only 11.13% of the decision.