Introduction ofApplication of architectural solutions that mitigate the impact of the high cost of electricity on the Saudi housing

The residents of Saudi Arabia are facing issues of high-cost electricity in housing societies. The energy efficiency programs investigated that by employing efficient architectural solutions the buildings can reduce electricity consumption by up to 27 percent and the 30 percent reduction in the peak electricity demand is in Saudi Arabia (Export. gov, 2018). The low-price electricity services in Saudi Arabia generate a large number of incentives for businesses and households.

The investment in residential buildings is a cost-effective program but on the contrary public policies and architectural solutions are the best alternatives to focus on (Dubey, Howarth, & Krarti, 2017). From the economic perspective of electricity prices, the basis energy retrofit program was based on the energy efficiency measures. The program launched by the government in the residential buildings could reduce the electricity consumption as 10,000 GWh/year, carbon emissions as 7.6 million tonnes/year, and the peak demand is 2,290 MW (Besheer & Hamidi, 2012). The cost-effective programs launched by the government reduced the requirement of power generation capacity over the lifetime of the program as $2.7 billion.

The avoided cost of electricity consumption was between $500 million and $1.7 billion per year. The program is based on the assumed power tariff.  During the statistical analysis of 2013, the international monetary fund (IMF) measured the energy subsidies as $128.9 billion and the cost was 13.6 of Saudi GDP (Besheer & Hamidi, 2012). As a result, there is an urgent need for new strategies that reduce the excessive use of electricity in residential buildings. One of the best strategies is mainly associated with passive architectural designs based on principles of building and construction. Such type of potential and cost-effective solutions can be used as a source of major savings in electricity (Kanani, Dawood, & Vukovic, 2019; Besheer & Hamidi, 2012).

The main aim of the present work is to identify possible architectural solutions to reduce the consumption of electricity in Saudi Arabia. In this view, the present report will represent a complete description of research by using BIM software. The method is expediting change practices used in the construction of buildings in Saudi residential areas (Besheer & Hamidi, 2012). The designing of buildings is under the 3D BIM software after energy analysis and prediction of reduced levels of energy consumption practices in Saudi Arabia.

Problem statement

The report of the Saudi Energy Efficiency Center (SEEC) demonstrates that the buildings are the major contributors to the energy consumption of Saudi Arabia. The previous reports show that during 2011 the Saudi buildings consumed approximately 80 percent of the total generated energy of Saudi Arabia. The consumption of energy in the residential buildings is measured as 51.2 % and 70% of electricity is consumed by the air conditioning system (Besheer & Hamidi, 2012). The forecast report for 2020 estimated that there would be 2.32 million new residential buildings in Saudi Arabia. The increase in the number of buildings will increase in energy and electricity consumption rate because most of the buildings will be equipped with state of the art technology to keep the building cool. This trend indicates the significant increase in the demand of electricity associated with the increase in residential buildings. The sustainable approaches for building designs and solutions will enable to achieve thermal comfort by having simple techniques of heating as well as cooling of buildings (Kanani, Dawood, & Vukovic, 2019)

References of Application of architectural solutions that mitigate the impact of the high cost of electricity on the Saudi housing

Besheer, A., & Hamidi, W. D. (2012). Design procedures for an average Saudi villa using integrated green building techniques. ECO-ARCHITECTURE 2012, 01(02), 01-10.

Dubey, K., Howarth, N., & Krarti, M. (2017). Evaluating Building Energy Efficiency Investment Options for Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center.

Export. gov. (2018). Saudi Arabia - AEC. Retrieved from www.export.gov: https://www.export.gov/article?id=Saudi-Arabia-Architecture-Engineering-and-Construction

Kanani, A. A., Dawood, N., & Vukovic, V. (2019). Energy Efficiency in Residential Buildings in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Springer International Publishing, 130-139.