Kuwait’s per capita electrical energy consumption is among the largest in the world, reaching 13,663 kWh per person in 2011. The electricity demand in Kuwait is increasing, which requires additional investments in power generation. A particular challenge in Kuwait is the peak demand in summer, when extreme heat increases air conditioning loads. Peak demand reached 11,220 MW in 2011, with a fast growth rate averaging 5.6% over the last decade and a maximum production capacity of around 14,720 MW. It is not possible to cope with this demand simply by increasing generation capacity. Therefore, the only alternative available to Kuwait is to control electricity demand via demand-side management. The main objective of this research is to assess and select the optimal demand- side management (DSM) technologies for buildings in the governmental sector (office, religious and school buildings) and to investigate the key factors in the evaluation process. To achieve the research objective, a model was proposed using multi-criteria decision-making techniques to enable the forecasting and comparison of DSM alternatives that are suitable for buildings. The developed model includes environmental, economic, technical and social considerations. The research methodology is based on three main phases. Phase 1: Data collection through a mail questionnaire that was sent to 42 experts for the identification of criteria and demand-side management alternatives. Phase 2: Screening and narrowing of the data collected in Phase 1 using a set of questionnaires, including the identification of potential DSM alternatives and criteria suitable for further analysis. This phase was performed through the Delphi process, taking into consideration the opinions of 28 experts. Phase 3: Use of Multi-criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques, namely the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP), to evaluate and rank the identified DSM alternatives and criteria. This was done using pairwise comparisons of 17 experts to evaluate the criteria and alternatives for the buildings (office, religious and school). The research showed that the experts identified six alternative technologies and five criteria for the selection and evaluation of governmental buildings (office, religious and school). After performing the three phases of this research project, a set of criteria and alternatives were ranked based on the information gathered from every group of experts. It was found that reduction in consumption, capital cost and ease of implementation were the three most recommended criteria for the selection of DSM technologies in Kuwait government buildings while high efficiency lighting and programmable thermostats were identified as the most recommended DSM technologies for these buildings. An important aspect of this research is that unlike engineering approaches which sometimes depend on expensive test equipment or, often for building design, expensive computer modelling exercises, the proposed framework can be easily adopted by anyone without any significant financial cost. The FAHP approach was also tested and its results compared with those of AHP. There was a slight difference between using AHP and FAHP in terms of ranking the criteria and alternatives but that the difference barely affects the ranking. It was found that the AHP provides a convenient MCDM approach for solving the complex problem of selecting the optimal DSM options for buildings. The contributions of this thesis are the development of a novel framework for systematic selection and ranking of DSM technologies in different types of buildings using the Delphi method and AHP; the identification of the most important DSM technologies and criteria for their selection for three types of governmental buildings in Kuwait; and establishing that results from using AHP and FAHP for the selection of appropriate DSM measures in these buildings are almost identical, so use of AHP is likely to be sufficient in most building studies of this type.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:646380 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Al-Ajmi, Abdullah A. |
| Publisher | De Montfort University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/2086/10948 |
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