DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTER AIDED SYSTEM FOR DETERMINING THE ENERGY DEMAND OF A BUILDING

Abstract

Buildings have significant impact on energy usage and the environment. Many buildings are built without proper estimation of the energy to be used by the building (according to its specification) and for the consumption of the occupants. This has led to many researcher to explore various means of making a building for energy efficient. In this study, a computer aided system was developed through data collected and relevant thermodynamic equations and formulae. The programming language (VB.net) used in developing the system, enables the user to input the building data through a graphical user interface and also provides access to database created within the system. The developed system was validated using the second floor of School of Engineering and Engineering Technology (SEET) building of Federal University of Technology Akure, and also a two-bedroom bungalow was used as a residential building for validating the system. The system developed was able to facilitate the proper estimation of the cooling load, lighting load and appliance load of the buildings in a shortest time of about 45 min compared to a day spent in manual calculation. The total estimate of energy demanded by the second floor of SEET building for an hour was 105 kW while the two-bedroom bungalow was 35 kW. The results show that the developed system can be useful for all professional involved in building projects from the design stage to completion