Electricity is used in educational buildings, and there are now numerous attempts to reduce consumption, achieve sustainability, and protect the environment. This paper aims to study energy consumption, identify opportunities to rationalize energy consumption, and propose solutions at Sulaiman Al-Rajhi University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in order for the university campus to become sustainable. The results showed that total annual electrical consumption totaled 13,859 MWh in 2021. The air conditioning system, other devices, and lighting have the percentage of consumption 79, 14, and 7% of the total, respectively. Electricity consumption intensity was approximately 145–155 kWh/m2, and the per capita intensity was approximately 12,987–16,351 kWh, in the period 2017–2021. The price of the electrical energy generated on the university campus ranged between 0.3 and 0.53 SR/kWh in 2021, while the electricity tariff from the grid for educational buildings was 0.18 SR/kWh. This means that the public grid was 50% cheaper than campus-generated electricity. At the price of energy generated by generators, the total simple payback time (SPBT) for the suggested energy conservation measures (ECMs) is 4.13 years, whereas the SPBT is 8.96 in the case of the consumption of the electricity supplied by the national grid. The environmental benefits of the proposed ECMs were also identified.

One of the primary things damaging the environment is the use of energy. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), electricity is the main source of energy in educational buildings. To conserve the environment, significant efforts are now being made to reduce energy use in general and electricity use in particular. To be sustainable, it is also vital to research the possibilities of employing solar energy in the higher education sector since it is also accessible in the KSA. The main motives behind this study are the low prices of photovoltaic (PV) solar systems globally and the existence of a new government system to benefit from solar energy in the KSA. The utilization of PV solar energy at Sulaiman Al-Rajhi University in the Qassim region was examined in this article. Two scenarios were considered: scenario 1, in which the entire roof of the buildings is covered by a PV system, and scenario 2, for securing electricity so that it is a nearly zero-bill campus (nZBC). The yield factors calculated for scenarios 1 and 2 are 1896  and 1922 kWh/kWp, respectively, while the capacity factor is 21.6% for scenario 1 and 21.9% for scenario 2. For scenarios 1 and 2, the systems produce 2,160,181 and 10,199,253 kWh of electrical energy annually, respectively. The production in the second scenario is about 113% of the load to reach an nZBC, compared to the first scenario's coverage of about 24% of the load. The levelized cost of energy was found to be between 0.026 and 0.028 $/kWh, with a simple payback period of 10 years for scenario 1 and 8.1 years for scenario 2. Additionally, the proposed systems’ environmental benefits were noted.