Energy efficiency improvement in hospital buildings, based on the example of a selected type of hospital facility in Poland

Abstract

Energy demand in hospitals is of highly diverse nature: Heat energy, cool energy and electricity. A guarantee of energy supply is required to ensure continuity of medical procedures. Taking care of the lowest possible costs of hospital operations, special attention should be paid to energy efficiency of the installations used in the hospital buildings. The paper presents an analysis of energy demand for heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting in an example hospital in Poland. The selected object was considered a reference as it was built according to a repetitive construction plan, according to which several dozen other hospitals were built in Poland. On the basis of data from 2013-2017, a summary of heat, cold and electricity demand for the hospital in its current technical condition was prepared. Concepts of technical and economic modernization of systems using energy in the analysed facility were proposed, assuming different ranges of changes for individual installations in the hospital. After the analysis of various modernization options, a project was proposed combining the use of heat pumps, photovoltaic installations and generation of heat and cooling in trigeneration, all of which allowed to reduce the costs of operation of the hospital energy systems by about 31%.