Air Conditioning

Air conditioning in the MEWC LEO building has been made efficient in three ways. First, the air conditioning is not controlled from one central point. Instead, it can be switched off in individual rooms or areas while remaining on in others, depending on whether these areas are occupied or not. Each floor of the building has its own air handling unit (AHU) which is subdivided into smaller zones, and the volume of chilled air channeled into each zone is controlled by factors such as temperature and occupancy.

Second, the air conditioning is set to keep occupied areas in the building at 25C as opposed to anything lower, which not only sometimes becomes uncomfortable for occupants, but also uses unnecessary energy. Computer modeling shows that if the room temperature is 20C rather than 24C, total electricity consumption of the building increases by one third due to the higher cooling load.

Third, Putrajaya as a whole receives chilled water from a district cooling plant which operates on natural gas and which pumps cold water through underground pipes to all the buildings in the area. This chilled water is used for air conditioning purposes, reducing the need for individual electric air conditioning chillers in the different ministerial and commercial buildings.