Abstract
Growths in population, increasing demand for health care services and comfort levels, together with patients on the rise in time spent inside hospitals, assure the upward trend that energy demand will continue in the future. Since the hospital buildings operate 24 hours, 365 days a year for the treatment and restoration of patients, they are approximately 2–3 times more energy-intensive than normal buildings. For this reason, energy efficiency in hospitals is one of the prime objectives for energy policy at regional, national and international levels. This study aims to find how meaningful energy performance, reflecting good energy management and energy conservation measures (ECMs), can be operated for hospital buildings, a category encompassing complex buildings with different systems and large gaps between them. Energy audit allows us to obtain knowledge from the healthcare facility, in order to define and tune data driven analysis rules. The use of benchmarking in the energy audit of healthcare facilities enables immediate comparison between hospitals. Data driven energy analysis also allows ascertaining their expected energy consumption and estimating the possible savings margin by using the building energy flow chart. In the 2015–2017 periods, bench-marking of four public hospitals in Seoul were audited for the energy consumption related to weather conditions, total area, bed numbers, employee numbers, and analyzed for building energy flow by zones, energy sources, systems and equipment. This is a practice-based learning in a hospital project. The results reveal that the average annual energy consumption of a hospital under normal conditions, and energy efficiency factors are divided into energy baselines, energy consumption goals for energy saving and energy usage trends for setting ECMs, respectively. The indicator dependent on the area of inpatients (number of beds) proved to be the most suitable as a reference to quantify the energy consumption of a hospital.
Highlights
In order to evaluate the efficiency of HVAC, lighting and medical devices that can be used in hospital buildings, a basic energy flow analysis methodology was set up, and various sources of energy data were analyzed
The results showed that among the offices, hospitals, and schools, the hospitals were using the energy more than two times, and it was evaluated that the HVAC, lighting density, and building envelope had the largest effect on the energy consumption
39.5% of average reduction was shown in the lightings and about 14.1% reduction effect was derived in the HVAC
Summary
A new obligation of greenhouse gas reduction and energy saving is assigned through a climate change agreement. At the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21), South. Korea announced a 37% reduction goal based on the 2030 greenhouse gas emission forecast (BAU), whereby the main target is a reduction of energy use in the building. The energy consumption in the building sector is about 25% of total energy use in South Korea [1], and 20–40% based on that of the OECD countries [2]. In Seoul, it is 55.9% in 2013, which is larger than the usual proportion. Energies 2019, 12, 3006 of building energy use in advanced countries and South Korea [3]. Since the hospital buildings operate 24 hours, 365 days a year for the treatment and restoration of patients, they are approximately
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