RESTRUCTURING
main reason for adopting recirculating HVAC systems, particularly in tropical and sub- tropical climates. However, new technologies, such as solar cooling and high efficiency heat recovery systems, negate this issue. In a critical environment such as a
hospital, patient and staff safety are of paramount importance. Therefore, we should be moving towards systems with 100% outdoor fresh air.
Low carbon solutions Healthy communities are inter-linked with low carbon communities. The proposed masterplan would remove a significant amount of air pollution from the city thus improving the air quality and reducing the carbon footprint at the same time. However, there are additional benefits to be gained if we could combine the energy
load profiles of a hospital with those of other city centre buildings. A hospital is one of the largest single
energy consumers in a city. It has a unique load profile with high daytime demands for cooling and evening demands for hot water. When this is combined with the load profiles of offices, schools, restaurants, cinemas, etc, there are very real opportunities to provide district energy schemes where the base heating/hot water load can be generated as a by-product of the electricity generation (Co-Gen). There are also opportunities to utilise district wide cooling schemes with chilled water storage. If we go back to our proposed masterplan,
the distributed Wellness Centers on the boundary of the ‘no car’ zone could be nodes on a district wide energy solution. Depending on the unique location of each Wellness
Center, there would be varying opportunities for renewable technologies to be applicable – for example wind power, solar cooling, large solar arrays and heat pump technologies. If we had distributed generation then we would also achieve distributed resilience, which is essential for healthcare and modern cities. Consideration could be given to peak load management with the incorporation of electric vehicles, plugging into the solar powered car park during the day when the owners are at work. The vehicles would collectively act as a large capacitor to take up some of the over production and over demand periods. In conclusion, all of the above is
technically possible today. All we need is some out of the box thinking in terms of funding streams, a lot of vision and some willpower.
Providing insights into the vast field of healthcare engineering and facility management
82 IFHE DIGEST 2013
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