An Investigation on Energy Consumption of Air Conditioning System in Beijing Subway Stations

Abstract

This paper initially depicted on the energy consumption of air conditioning systems in Beijing subway stations. An investigation was conducted among ten underground subway stations to the examination of practical operation conditions of their cooling units. The overall field testing included information such as air conditioning system formation, equipment types, system operation parameters, energy consumption and system operation efficiency. The results showed that the COP value of refrigerators in the tested subway stations were generally high at about 4.4 in average. Nevertheless, the mean EER and SCOP values were nearly 27% and 48% lower than the average COP value due to the large amount of energy consumption in water pumps, cooling towers and fans. There was a big difference among each station in terms of the instantaneous power consumption of air conditioning systems. The most energy consuming station was nearly seven times higher than the least one. It was observed that there was a lack of maintenance and system operation strategy for these underground air condition systems. A promising potential for energy saving was found out within the air conditioning systems in Beijing subway stations.