Retrofitting of existing buildings to achieve better energy-efficiency in commercial building case study: Hospital in Egypt

Abstract

Egypt has large energy production but due to the huge increase in domestic consumption and decrease of investment in energy sector, Egypt has become dependent on hydrocarbon imports. This problem had a negative impact on economical trade balance and the country budget. Therefore, Egyptian government stimulates the energy saving research. Air conditioning system in buildings consumed 56% of total energy consumed in buildings (Fink, 2011, Aldossary et al., 2013) [17] , [18] . In Future HVAC energy consumption will rise further due to increase in growing population, rapid expansion and call for new residential and commercial buildings, and rising global warming due to climate change. A hospital in Alexandria, Egypt, was chosen as a case study as the hospital considered a huge energy consumption building due to 24 h 7 days availability, medical equipments, and requirements for clean air and disease control. In this study an efficient energy saving technique that decreases the energy consumption and reduces HVAC system sizing in buildings was developed. This will provide specific methodologies and information, for energy efficiency improvements in hospital at Alexandria, Egypt, to help hospital designers and managers in getting started on an energy managing program and creating some “energy winnings” in order to save more energy for other purpose. The new system that was selected according to the new hospital cooling loads was compared against the existing system and significant energy saving (7,068,178 kW h/year) was found.