Energy Consumption of Conventional and Solar Air Conditioning Systems: A Comparative Study

The significant energy consumption systems in the world are air conditioning devices. This issue becomes a crisis when the required energy needs in the world is met by fossil fuels. In this study, conventional and solar air conditioning systems are compared. Real weather data of the city of Baghdad-Iraq were used. Matlab has been used to model the cooling power of electric chillers and solar radiation. Results showed that the use of a solar cooling system with a capacity of 2.5 kW can reduce the energy consumption by 65% compared to conventional air conditioning systems. Reducing energy consumption will reduce customer costs and profitability and reduce environmental emissions to a significant extent, which indicates the effectiveness of the proposed method. The proposed model reduces the daily energy demand, the energy cost, and the amount of CO2 emission as well. This comparison gives a significant indictor to the energy efficiency market.