Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 2 - STEER (Support Tool for Energy Efficiency pRogrammes in medical centres)
Teaser
STEER originates from the need to address energy efficiency actions in hospitals with the strategic goal to support the process of forecasting the effects of actions aimed at reducing energy consumption. The end product of the STEER Project is the E3 prototype software tool...
Summary
STEER originates from the need to address energy efficiency actions in hospitals with the strategic goal to support the process of forecasting the effects of actions aimed at reducing energy consumption.
The end product of the STEER Project is the E3 prototype software tool for predicting the energy behavior of medical centers, developed as a web service. Once required data is input via a web Graphical User Interface, the developed algorithm is called to perform the calculations that assess to ideal energy consumption of the building.
The input to the calculating algorithm is a set of data that describes in detail the main features of the facility, such as the buildings’s envelope.
The back-end tool was designed to operate in a dual mode. The first mode is associated with buildings for which are available all the required data described below. In this case, the tool provides a graphical user interface for data input.
The second mode of operation is to be used when data is missing, or when the building energy audit is not available, which actually happens, according to the consortium experience, in the majority of the hospitals.
The algorithm is based on the STEER Quasi Steady State Model (QSSM), implemented in GNU Octave environment. The QSSM (Quasi Steady State Model) was developed in accordance to the procedures specified in the International Standard EN13790 2nd edition, 2008-03-01 (Energy performance of buildings – Calculation of energy use for heating and cooling), which lists various possible methods to be used in the calculation process.
E3 tool generates a final report that offers to the user information on the energy behavior of the simulated building. This report presents the total electrical consumption of the building from all sources per month as well as for the entire year. It also presents the electrical consumption associated with the heating and cooling system of the building. All this data is presented in a color-coded graph. The output webpage report consists of graphs and a table on yearly and monthly consumption as shown in figure 4. The aim is to have a fast and clear representation of the energy consumption segmentation in energy systems (HVAC systems or other systems as lighting, medical devices etc), in different zones and in different months. Output data can be downloaded in pdf files presenting the same data as in figure 4, but with tabular and graph view for each output.
Work performed
A the beginning we engaged 3 main hospitals in Italy, 2 in Greece and a modern and just built hospital in Spain.
In 2016 we added 2 new beneficiaries: Meazon (GR) and Afeka Yissumim (IL). We then completed data collection in the engaged hospitals. We reported on the analysis of data collected, explaining the Unified Hospital Energy Audit Form used for that and described feasible modelling techniques to obtain hospitals\' energy profiles estimation.
In the second part of the project, the consortium had to face the serious problem of uncompletness in crucial data received from the hospitals engaged. The consortium thus engaged another hospital in Italy (S. Teresa in Bagheria) which fully cooperated, and used further data from US hospitals.
This way it was possible to achieve all the project\'s goal, even if in delay in submitting the deliverables.
All Milestones listed in the proposal, were achieved a few months later than expected.
The project\'s main results are described more in detail below, but briefly we can state that the E3 tool can support any entity involved in energy efficiency programs in hospitals in all its phases, from the tender to the actual running of the project.
As far as exploitation and communication is concerned, the consortium created a website as weill as a Twitter account. Members of the consortium submitted varous scientific publications, and in order to meet the OpenAIRE (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe) requirements, the consortium created a Community associated with the STEER project on Zenodo under URL https://zenodo.org/communities/steer?page=1&size=20
The STEER related papers published by the different partners are provided with open access rights in this platform. A hyperlink to this community has been placed on the STEER project webpage (http://steer.ctadventure.com/. Details on communication and dissemination activties can be found in deliverable D.1.3.
Final results
Energy efficiency is a major tool to cut bills and pollution, and hospitals are among major energy consumers that often lack the resources to carry out efficiency programs.
A first meaningful result reached by the consortium, was to create an European format for data collection on energy system in hospitals, abiding to all EU norms and national standards. Often only part of the information required by the format can be retrieved from hospitals.
E3, the prototype software tool that the consortium developed for predicting the energy behavior of medical centers and that can help to follow an energy efficiency program, is innovative also on the following issues
1) Measurement and Verification Plans (M&V)
According to the ISO 50015:2014 energy efficiency programs should include sound M&V plans, which often means relying on IPMVP protocol. It envisages 4 options to set a such a plan and to quantify the savings achieved. While setting the baseline for option A and B ( field measurement of key parameters directly related or not to the retrofits) may be easy, it si much more complicated for options C and D (measuring or simulating energy use of the whole facility before and after the retrofit), which are more suitable when the performance reporting needs to be at the facility level (which often happens) and often saving are estimated in a rather simplistic way.
E3 Innovation: It defines the baseline, calculates energy performance, and savings, according to the input data that can be changed for get different scenarios
2) ISO 5001 Certification - which is now compulsory for any ESCO company wishing to bid on large contracts
ISO 50001 provides a framework to establish energy management best practices and thus help organisations to improve their energy efficiency while making a return on their investment. It is applicable to any organisation and require that every year, managers shouold define an energy efficiency plan (even based on small changes, behavioural or physical ones). Again, the concept of baseline is at the core of this system.
At present, without relying on the E3 tool, ESCO companies are at pains to prepare such plans while abiding to the requirements of ISO 5001 Certification bodies, and have to rely on data fomr energy bills and then develop a homemaid regression analysis. This might look as a quite biased methodology and would work only in case of routine adjustments, i.e. without significant changes in the energy consumption behaviour due for example to the opening a new ward in the hospital, while it disregards non-routine adjustments, which in are frequent in a hospital during the 15 years of an average ESCO contract.
E3 Innovation:The E3 tool is able to calculate the routine and non-routine adjustments in a rather transparent way and relying on an unbiased algorithm set by highly esteemed European research centers, solving this issue in a scientific way for M&V pland more suitable for reporting at facility level, as it is customary for signiificant contracts
Website & more info
More info: http://steer.ctadventure.com/.