An Agent Based Model of Saudi Household Electricity Consumption

Electricity demands are growing rapidly in Saudi Arabia and would continue to increase as the population grows. Due to the harsh weather conditions in Saudi, half of those demands originate from the residential sector where they rely heavily on air conditioning systems. In order to lower overall consumption, the Saudi government launched several public awareness campaigns to promote responsible electricity use and encourage consumers to acknowledge the electricity consumption label when buying household appliances. They also encouraged insulate houses where it would reduce electricity consumption significantly. To address these issues, this paper presents an Agent-based model (ABM) of domestic electricity consumption. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a technique that incorporates social factors that are focused on the individual, to simulate the interaction of the individual with its environment. It aims to simulate household electricity consumption with consideration of the household members activities. With the household members behavior as a context and rich data, we aim to investigate the benefits of a more efficient household on the overall Saudi energy consumption.