Potential electricity bill reduction in university building through load shifting strategy

Abstract

In Malaysia, medium voltage commercial consumers are charged base on two tariffs i.e. Monthly electricity consumption in kWh and Maximum demand in kW for that particular month. To reduce electricity bill, it is obvious that the consumer need to reduce their electricity consumption by installing energy save equipments or imposing drastic measure such as cut off some of its electrical equipment usage. However, these approaches require high financial investment and may reduce the true function of the building. Another approach, which is effective but drawn less attention by the consumer, is Load Shifting. The approach is one type of Demand Side Management (DSM) that is used to minimize the maximum demand of a consumer by shifting their electricity consumption of a particular period into another period. This paper presents the potential electricity bills saving through the use of Load Shifting strategy on university buildings. A case study has been conducted on selected buildings in Faculty of Electrical Engineering, UniversitiTeknologi Malaysia by using practical measured energy consumption data.