Energy Management in Hospitals: Evolution of a Methodology

The impact of properly managing energy in hospitals is significant, due to the high bills and polluting emissions, and is complex, due to the wide range of energy-consuming equipment to be kept always running. Energy efficiency plans in hospitals, which are pivotal in the European wide effort to redevelop existing buildings, have to be carried out as a part of a wider redesign process and must encompass complex data analysis and modeling. Based on the activity carried out within the European funded project H2020/MSCA/STEER, this work elaborates on the methodology, as tested on a building information model of a health center in Sicily, to identify positive and negative aspects of energy-related technology options to keep hospitals efficient. The main steps of the methodology carried out in the health center were: (1) collect data and input it in a digital model; (2) create and test a simplified quasi-steady-state model of the building; (3) create a dynamic simulation model of the building; (4) run dynamic and simplified model simulations of the energy performance of the building; (5) compare results obtained from the two models in various scenarios, showing that the relevant differences after indicative interventions and parameter changes are equivalent.