Design of energy efficient and thermally comfortable air-conditioned university classrooms in the tropics

Abstract

This study aims to design energy efficient and thermally comfortable air-conditioning system in university classrooms. The research has been conducted in two steps. The first step was a survey of students’ thermal comfort under air-conditioning classrooms, which collecting 175 questionnaires from 92 students. The second step was the calculation of cooling energy consumption using the EnergyPlus software. With the air temperature ranged from 23.0 to 27.0°C about 53% of respondents felt uncomfortable (cold or cool). The neutral temperature of students was found to be 27.0°C, which is higher than the classrooms’ temperature. The energy simulation results show that the most significant factors affecting energy use is the temperature setting. Therefore, there is a possibility to reduce the cooling energy while improving the thermal comfort of students. To this end, it is recommended to raise the air temperature setting from 25.0°C to a minimum of 26.0°C.

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