Improving Energy Efficiency in Egyptian Airports: A Case Study of Sharm-Elshiekh Airport

Airports can play a major role in reducing the burden on the national electric grid as they have several factors that make them optimum models for applying energy efficiency strategies. Accordingly, this paper presents a Dual-Dimension Strategy (DDS) to improve the energy efficiency in the airports. This strategy aims to study the opportunities of improving energy efficiency in a way that do not affect the comfort level of occupants, as well as studying the challenges of implementing PV power stations at or around the airports without affecting the safety of aviation. In this context, a case study was conducted at Sharm-Elshiekh airport as a high occupancy level airport to discuss the opportunities and challenges accompanied by the proposed strategy. The detailed simulation of the proposed strategy was carried out using the “DesignBuilder” software, which is automatically conducted with the “EnergyPlus” simulator. Results showed that airports have an opportunity to reduce its energy consumption by up to 25% monthly by using smart control systems such proposed fuzzy system. In addition, the implementation of PV stations in or round the airports can contribute in feeding the airports with a huge amount of clean energy according to the available space and the irradiation in the site of the airport. All of these results refer to save millions of carbon emissions which resulted from depending on fuel sources.