How IoT and Artificial Intelligence can improve energy efficiency in hospitals - a North Italian case study

Riccardo Frassanito,Matteo Iemmi,Pietro Canevari,Paolo Albrici,Stephanie Aumann,Tiziana Buso,Francesca Mapelli,Jacopo Toniolo,C Zilio,F Busato

doi:10.1051/e3sconf/202234302001

Riccardo Frassanito, Matteo Iemmi + Show 8 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202234302001

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Abstract

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare facilities have experienced pressure of increasing occupancy rates and more demanding Indoor Air Quality requirements in recent months. In this context, the efficient management of the HVAC system in these buildings has become a crucial topic to address. The retrofit project was the result of the joint effort of a digital solution provider, Enerbrain, and the Hospital’s energy services provider, Edison. By exploiting IoT and ICT technologies and cloud-based machine learning algorithms, the HVAC-related control features of the main heating and ventilation systems of the hospital have been upgraded with no major modifications to the existing setup. The implemented solution allows energy managers to remotely verify the real-time indoor comfort conditions and to control the upgraded systems, which, thanks to the machine learning adaptive algorithms, are now effectively meeting the required set-points through advanced optimization strategies. This paper presents the implementation of a retrofit measure applied to the HVAC Building Management System of a big public hospital in Lombardy and the energy savings achieved in the 2020-2021 heating season.

Highlights

The following paragraphs describe the savings assessment method adopted and the energy savings achieved over the whole period, with a focus on the maintained indoor conditions
To verify the energy savings achieved thanks to the upgraded control strategy, the energy use of the hospital monitored from the activation of the new system to the end of the heating season (1 December 2020 – 30 April 2021) was compared to the historical data given by the hospital’s energy services provider
The baseline energy model was built by plotting the monthly energy consumption data recorded from until November 2020 versus corresponding the monthly Heating Degree Days (HDD), calculated as prescribed by (UNI, 2008) using the historical weather data available from the closest ARPA weather station

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light and exacerbated all the challenges that health and care systems have been facing in recent years. Efforts to cope with global problems, ranging from the sudden spread of unknown diseases to the constantly increasing demand of an ever-expanding and ageing population, are coupled with rising financial restrictions and issues of sustainability. There is a wide consensus that health systems globally but in Italy need to undergo dramatic operational change if they are to adequately respond to present and future population health needs. Specific processes, and operations, the health sector is a sizable consumer of energy and resources and a major producer of emissions and waste, and health facilities such as hospitals are the major contributor to this issue. The projection trend has worsened in the COVID period, when, while the overall global energy use has witnessed evident reductions, the health sector has increased its expenditure (Jiang et al, 2021)

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