Energy Efficient and Cool Storage Assisted Air-Conditioning System for Hospital Building

Air-conditioning (A/C) is an important sector for Kuwait. It is not only the single largest consumer of electricity, its yearly import accounts for well over 200 million US dollars. Energy conservation measures have been in practice in Kuwait since 1983 through a well defined code of practice enforced by the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW). Additional energy efficient products and techniques developed thereafter, however, have not been introduced as the electricity is highly subsidized and the MEW code has not been modified. Applications of some of the cost effective energy conservation measures and use of cool storage for peak power shaving have been carried out as a demonstration project in a two-story building, housing the Center for Speech and Audio Therapy having 3,180 m2 of air-conditioned space. As a first step, the building cooling load was re-estimated using an energy simulation computer program and proper design specifications. It was found to be 31.4% lower than the original estimated load of 161.3 tons of refrigeration (RT). Use of energy-efficient windows and cooling recovery units that were found to be cost-effective resulted in a final building load of 64.5 RT. Finally, ice storage was incorporated to meet 50% of the peak cooling load. This paper presents the complete design details including the impact of a building load simulation program and cost benefit analysis of important energy conservation measures. It also presents a design and operation scheme for a cool storage, assisted A/C system and its performance results collected during the summer of 1998.