Design of a Smart Campus Energy Management System for Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife

Energy consumption management at large Nigerian universities like Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, South West Nigeria, is hampered by the absence of real-time monitoring infrastructure and decentralised energy billing. This project designs a smart campus energy management system for OAU, enabling faculty-level electricity consumption tracking and automated load scheduling. The system uses smart meter hardware interfaced with a Python backend and a Grafana visualisation dashboard, deployed across 10 OAU faculty buildings as a pilot. The iterative development model supports progressive sensor integration and dashboard feature additions guided by feedback from the OAU Physical Planning and Development Unit. Features include real-time consumption dashboards per building, consumption anomaly alerts, load scheduling for high-draw equipment, and monthly energy reporting. Evaluation over two months compares energy consumption before and after load scheduling activation, alongside system reliability metrics. Results show a 19 percent reduction in total campus energy expenditure in pilot buildings and identification of three high-consumption anomalies that were subsequently resolved. The study recommends full campus rollout and integration with OAU's independent power plant management system to close the energy data loop. This research provides a technology-led framework for energy efficiency in South West Nigerian universities facing rising operational costs. Keywords: smart campus, energy management, OAU Ile-Ife, smart meter, load scheduling