Energy Management Practices in State Universities and Colleges (SUCs): An Assessment for an IOT Intervention

Abstract

Monitoring and analyzing a building’s energy consumption patterns are major components for an effective energy management system, which helps in understanding the building’s operational behavior under different conditions. Energy management teams of universities are responsible for monitoring, analyzing and maintaining energy consumption data of their buildings. The study was conducted to elucidate the status of energy consumption, and to identify and illustrate the potential weak areas found from the energy consumption gap analysis in the context of government HEIs. The gap in this study was addressed by providing a detailed assessment of energy consumption practices and insights in an intra-university context, primarily through the identification of key practices leading to energy-saving measures. The work presented in this paper relied on data obtained from energy audits from the complete set of buildings over several campuses. In the occurrence of disparity between the actual values and the theoretical values, a focused group discussion was conducted to determine the energy consumption practices. The researchers had identified and categorized lists of practices based on the literature and selected those most applicable for government-funded HEIs. The researchers identified the list of key practices anchoring three Energy Management models: ISO 5001, Energy Star and BRECSU Energy Management System. The study determined that addressing specific key practices leading to an effective energy management system helps develop clear and achievable goals and objectives that adopt the SMART concept in the implementation of energy management programs.