Electricity Usage Reduction Measures against Air Conditioning System for Laboratory

Abstract

   Kyoto University started to plan a moving of Graduate School of Engineering to Katsura Campus in 2000. New facilities were built and thirteen air conditioning systems to control a temperature and humidity precisely for specific research were installed in C Cluster. The purpose of this study was to evaluate an electricity usage of these air conditioning systems under several operational situations. We selected X-ray analysis laboratory (volume: 117.1 m³, exhaust flow: 300 m³/hour, preset temperature: 20±2 Celsius, preset humidity: 60%) in a basement floor for measuring an electricity usage per minutes. As a result, the usage under saving operation mode (17-20 Celsius, 60% humidity) was half amount of that under normal operation mode (20±2 Celsius, 60% humidity). The amount of usage decreased dramatically after stopping humidity control, too. The electricity usage was slightly downregulated in proportion to running time and became only one twenty-fifth upon installing the inverter controller (ITECS Co., Ltd.). These results indicate that installing an inverter system and switching off a humidity control were the most effective to cut an electricity usage.