Gregory F. Lane-Serff

Lifecycle cost analysis for better air conditioning choice in Kuwait residential sector

Residential air conditioning consumes a huge amount of the produced electrical power from fossil fuel power plants in Kuwait. Energy availability and the consequences on Kuwait’s expenditure associated with producing electricity is a hot topic in this oil producing country. The predominant air conditioning type in Kuwait’s residential sector is packaged direct expansion. An intention to shift to chilled water air conditioning system for future’s houses was announced as a promising solution to save energy. This work is presented to demonstrate how lifecycle cost analysis can be performed to underline tentative issues before shifting to a new air conditioning system for houses in Kuwait. No previous attempts have been made to assess the feasibility of chilled water air conditioning system for houses in Kuwait based on lifecycle cost analysis. The work considered the air conditioning requirements for a block of six typical houses as a baseline for the evaluation. The total cooling load of the studied block of houses was used to estimate the annual electrical energy associated with each air conditioning alternative. This was made by the help of DOE EnergyPlus thermal simulation engine through its interface with DesignBuilder software. Actual financial inputs were penetrated in the analysis; which includes installation, operation and maintenance costs for each studied air conditioning alternative. It was found that chilled water system can conserve about 40% of the annual electrical energy required to operate packaged direct expansion air conditioning. But, due to high installation cost, chilled water system is not cost effective for consumers. The outcomes from the lifecycle cost analysis indicated that it would be cost effective for the government to subsidy the installation of chilled water systems for consumers. This will help to conserve electrical energy associated with conventional systems that are currently in use.Copyright

A combined cycle power plant with absorption cooling for houses air conditioning

This study examined the viability of a single-effectwater/lithium bromide absorption chiller driven by steamextracted from the steam turbine in the configuration of acombined cycle power plant (CCPP). System performance wasverified based on the annual cooling load profile of 1,000typical houses in Kuwait obtained from DesignBuilder buildingsimulation software. Computer models that represented a CCPPwith an absorption chiller and a CCPP with a Direct-Expansion(DX) air conditioning system were developed usingEngineering Equation Solver software. The computer modelsinteracted with the cooling load profiles obtained fromDesignBuilder. Analysis shows that the CCPP with theabsorption chiller yielded less net electrical power to the utilitygrid compared to similar CCPPs giving electricity both to thegrid and to the Direct-Expansion air conditioning systems giventhe same cooling requirements. The reason for this finding isthe reduction in steam turbine power output resulting fromsteam extraction.

Energy and the implication of residential cooling in hot climates: Case study for developing effective solution for residential cooling demand in Kuwait

Global energy statistics showed that oil is the most sought after energy source in the world. The economic burden on countries that are dependent on oil to produce electricity is noteworthy. Residential cooling is a significant consumer of electricity produced by oil in major oil producing countries with hot climates conditions. For this, Kuwait was selected for further analysis. By analysing official annual electricity statistics in Kuwait, residential cooling consumes 58.4% of the total delivered electrical energy at peak time on a hot summer day. Accordingly, the paper investigated orientation and grouping patterns of future houses in Kuwait to determine their impact on cooling load and electrical energy consumption. The popular DOE EnergyPlus simulation engine, through its interface with DesignBuilder Software, was used to obtain the cooling loads of the future houses. It was found that efficient orientation and grouping of houses, which is a zero cost energy conservation measure, can lead to tangible savings for future houses with approximately

Transient buoyancy-driven ventilation: Part 1. Modelling advection

US 33 million of power system capital costs, 15 GWh per year of electrical energy consumption and 11 kilotons per year of CO2 emissions.