EXPLORATION OF ENERGY CONSERVATION MEASURES IN A LIBRARY BUILDING IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Being a vulnerable country, the demand for energy in Singapore has been increasing steadily annually and this will have a great impact on a small country with limited natural resources. Demolition of buildings is not a wise decision to improve energy performance since vast amount of embodied energy in building would be lost. Hence, retrofitting the existing building could be done to improve on the energy performance. Buildings need to look into viable energy conservation measures (ECMs) for more efficient use of energy. In this paper, extensive study on various ECMs and the green features in National Library Board of a similar building type was conducted. The purpose of this paper aims to explore the initiative at National Library Board and the possibility of utilizing similar features for similar buildings in Singapore. An in-depth case study was conducted on a public library in Singapore to determine the suitable ECMs that could be proposed to optimize the building performance and potentially achieve the defined energy target. The approach in this study involves a series of phases: data collection, base case development and implementation of ECMs. Information was obtained through as the utility data, observation, walkthrough and interviews with the building manager. This study uses energy simulation software, Visual DOE, to provide a simple outlook of the building and its estimated energy consumption breakdown. Due to incomplete data, the simulated results show a marginal but negligible deviation between actual and simulated consumption. Autodesk Vasari was also utilized in the study to investigate the sun impact on the building. The ECMs implemented focus on improving the building performance through passive design feature and adjustments to the existing active feature. Different ECMs were also combined to see which measures would provide maximum savings and cost efficiency. Through secondary resources and simulation result, it appears that the studied building has room for improvement. With the use of ECMs, energy saving of potentially up to 14% of improvement could be obtained. It is also observed that not all energy conservation methodologies are suitable for all building types as it would depends greatly on the existing building features, orientation and many more factors that may affect energy consumption. Hence, ECMs should be customized for each building.