Electric and lighting energy audit: A case study of selective commercial buildings in Dhaka

Energy audit can be one of the fastest and cheapest solutions to mitigate the gap between energy demand and supply since it identifies the energy loss and improvement areas. The paper shows a detailed analysis on building energy audit of some commercial buildings in Dhaka, evaluate and provide techniques to reduce energy loss, and a tool that has been developed to carry out energy audit of commercial buildings. The tool is developed using Microsoft Visual Basic Application and named "EnergyWise". Data entered by user forms is processed, summarized and transferred automatically to the excel spread sheets. The tool identifies the areas of electrical load consumption and their share as a percentage of the total load. The study shows that the electrical energy use in commercial buildings in Dhaka are quite inefficient and the consumption of electrical energy can be significantly reduced; up to 8%–15% energy reduction in electrical equipment and up to 28%–45% in lighting by replacing them with more efficient components.