Electricity consumption analysis for university buildings. Empirical approach for University of Castilla-La Mancha, campus Albacete (Spain)

Abstract

New global situation is boosting the necessity of analysing electricity consumption of university buildings, mainly motived by the exorbitant increase in electricity prices. In this regard, knowing such demand aims at three goals: i) to reduce their consumption, ii) to increase energy efficiency and iii) to develop solar PV installations. Very few research has previously analysed aggregated energy data for educational buildings, and none have studied detailed real electricity consumption in terms of hourly data, which results of utmost relevance, especially for the development of solar PV installations in these environments. Our research tackles this issue and provides a complete methodology to analyse electrical energy and hourly data consumption in university buildings, based on electricity indicators and patterns. The research has been applied to the University of Castilla-La Mancha, in Spain. A complete year data base (2021) of real power and electrical energy consumption of the whole campus has been collected and analysed, with an hourly scale. Results revealed that Biomedical Complex corresponds to the highest load demanding building of the campus (2770 MWh, 43% of the total campus). Outcomes also disclosed an annual high consumption base of 250 kWh for this building, together with 6 different seasonality patterns and 2 annual daily patterns.