Abstract
Places such as Saudi Arabia has a desert climate and therefore in most households, air conditioning is used. This country ranked 4th in the world from the perspective of using air conditioning. In 2018, the total electricity demand in residential buildings was 130 TWh and the share of cooling was 66%. In this study, by adding phase change materials to the wall to reduce the cooling load, electricity demand variations were examined. The results showed that the effects of phase change material on the cooling loads depends on the difference in melting temperature and interior setpoint temperature (T-melting-T-setpoint) Therefore, several phase change materials (A27, A28, A29 and A32) were selected with different melting temperatures (27-32 degrees C). An air handling unit was used to adjust the interior temperature at the setpoint within 21-31 degrees C. The best performance was corresponded to T-melting-T-setpoint = 2 degrees C. In other words, if the melting temperature of phase change material is higher than the setpoint by 2 degrees C, the phase change material performance will be maximized. Under this condition, the cooling load experienced the greatest reduction. At T-melting-T-setpoint = 2 degrees C, adding phase change material A27 reduced cooling load by 19,515 kWh. This figure for A28, A29 and A32 was 27,538, 25,034 and 33,905 kWh, respectively.