Results from previous work of Navia (2008) showed that many of the barns currently in use are not optimized for using energy as efficiently as possible, mainly because the cost of energy in the past has been very minimal. In view of emerging concern regarding the increasing trends in global energy prices, there is a need to re-examine existing barn building design and management to use less energy and more efficiently.  As part of the on-going effort to reduce the cost of production in swine operations, this study aims to optimize energy efficiency and reduce overall energy use in swine barns. Computer simulation is being utilized to examine various energy conservation strategies that can be applied in a barn. Preliminary results show that the use of air to air heat exchangers and lighting modifications have high potential in reducing the annual energy consumption in the barn. From the simulation results, the most promising measures will be retro-fitted into the barn to enable collection of actual barn data that will serve as basis for the development of a decision software tool.

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