Home Thermal Modeling: Cooling Energy Consumption and Costs in Saudi Arabia

Objectives: The consumption of electricity and its costs are expected to be increased in Saudi Arabia due to its rapid growth in population. As the Kingdom is characterized by extreme hot climate, a massive amount of electricity consumed by the residential sector goes to power air conditioners. To control this huge amount of energyconsumedin homes, thermal models have been generated with two or more parameters. Methodology: The households’ surveys have been conducted in order to collect the data. The Non-linear regression analysis has been carried out to obtain the outcomes of study. Moreover, household surveys have been conducted for data collection. The grid algorithm and the non-linear regression have been used to learn the parameters in the model to simulate the weather in Saudi Arabia. The temperature loggers have been placed in the houses to observe the behavior of residents of using cooling system. The web forecast has been used to analyze the temperature of cities on hourly basis. Results: Simple thermal model has been built using two parameters by applying the grid and non-linear regression methods for data fitting. Then the thermal model with envelope has also been created using four parameters by applying non-linear regression method for data fitting. Conclusion: It has been evaluated through outcomes that thermal model with envelope is better as compared to simple thermal model. Moreover, the data fitting by non-linear regression method has also been observed to perform better than data fitting by grid method.