A New Era of Energy Management
Educational campuses are big energy users, and most still manage energy the old way: a detailed audit, a set of recommendations, and fixed operating schedules.
Audits are valuable, but they are a snapshot in time. They cannot react to a hot afternoon, an exam week or a cloud passing over the solar panels.
This is where a Digital Twin comes in: a live virtual replica of the building, fed by sensors, that can simulate changes and decide when energy should be used. The research behind this article tests the idea on the Administrative Block of Punjab Engineering College (PEC), Chandigarh.
The baseline audit showed the building uses 365,480 kWh per year, with 66% of the load coming from air conditioning. Its rooftop has a solar potential of 213,153 kWh per year, and the digital dispatch layer has a modeled payback of just 0.78 years.
