Estimation and measurement of electric energy consumption due to air conditioning cooling load

Electric energy consumption due to air conditioning (A/C) in buildings is tremendous, especially in places having hot humid weather, such as Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Building simulation programs, such as DOE2, are very valuable tools to study building energy consumption under different conditions. These programs can be used to investigate the effect of different building designs on their energy consumption. This paper presents the experimental and theoretical variations of electric power consumed by an A/C system. For the experimental part, a building has been chosen, and different sensors were installed to measure and record electric kW consumption at different indoor and outdoor conditions. In the theoretical part, the Visual DOE simulation program, which is based on the well known DOE2E program, has been used. Actual building data was fed to the program to generate the instantaneous electric consumption due to A/C cooling load. Comparison between measured and predicted electric consumptions is presented. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.