Investigation of Energy Performance and Climate Change Adaptation Strategies of Hotels in Greece
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Investigation of energy performance and climate change adaptation strategies of hotels in Greece. A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Ifigenia Farrou Department of Mechanical Engineering, Brunel University DECEMBER 2013 ABSTRACT There is evidence that hotels are the highest energy use buildings of the tertiary sector in Europe and internationally because of their operational characteristics and the large number of users. Therefore, there is potential for significant energy savings. This study investigated the energy performance of the hotel sector in Greece and proposes a methodology for their energy classification and climate change mitigation strategies for an optimum building envelope design for a typical hotel building operated all year or seasonally. This was achieved by collecting operational energy data for 90 Greek hotels and analyzing them using the k-means algorithm. Then a typical hotel building was modelled using TRNSYS and climate change weather files to assess the impact on its energy demand and to propose climate change mitigation strategies. The assessment was performed via hourly simulations with real climatic data for the past and generated future data for the years 2020, 2050 and 2080. The analysis of the energy data (based on utilities supply) of 90 hotels shows average consumption approx 290 kWh/m2/year for hotels with annual operation and 200 kWh/m2/year for hotels with seasonal operation. Furthermore, the hotels were classified in well separated clusters in terms of their electricity and oil consumption. The classification showed that each cluster has high average energy consumption compared to other buildings in Greece. Cooling energy demand of the typical building increased by 33% and heating energy demand decreased by 22% in 2010 compared to 1970. Cooling load is expected to rise by 15% in year 2020, 34% in year 2050 and 63% in year 2080 compared to year 1970. Heating load is expected to decrease by 14% in year 2020, 29% in year 2050 and 46% in year 2080. It was found that different strategies can be applied to all year and seasonally operated buildings for the most energy efficient performance. These include: a. For all year operated buildings: insulation, double low e glazing, intelligently controlled night and day ventilation, ceiling fans and shading. The building of year 2050 would need more shading and the building of year 2080 would need additional shading and cool materials. b. For seasonally operated buildings: Intelligently controlled night and day ventilation, cool materials, ceiling fans, shading and double low e glazing. Only the building of year 2080 would need insulation. This study makes a contribution to understanding the impact of the climate change on the energy demand of hotel buildings and proposes mitigation strategies that focus on the building envelope in different periods and climatic zones of Greece. CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. 2 CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................ 3 LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... 8 LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... 10 LIST OF GRAPHS .................................................................................................................. 15 LIST OF SYMBOLS ................................................................................................................ 17 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................... 18 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... 19 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 21 Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 23 Original contribution to the body of knowledge .............................................................. 24 Structure of the thesis ..................................................................................................... 25 2 Greek hotels _ Literature Review ................................................................................. 29 2.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 29 2.2. Tourism in the Mediterranean countries .............................................................. 29 2.3. Architectural structure of hotels .......................................................................... 31 2.4. Energy use in the hotel sector .............................................................................. 32 2.5. Energy consumption of the Greek hotel sector..................................................... 40 2.5.1. National energy project ‘VALOREN’ Programme ............................................... 40 2.5.2. EU project CHOSE............................................................................................. 43 2.5.3. EU project HOTRES ........................................................................................... 46 2.6. Energy flows in a hotel unit .................................................................................. 48 2.7. Chapter Conclusions ............................................................................................ 50 3 Statistical Analysis of Hotel Sector in Greece ............................................................... 54 3.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 54 3.2. Characteristics of Greek tourism .......................................................................... 54 3.3. Number of Greek hotels ....................................................................................... 55 3.4. Construction characteristics ................................................................................. 57 3.5. Energy conservation measures for the building stock ........................................... 57 3.6. Legislation and classification of tourist accommodation according to the ‘star system’............................................................................................................................ 60 3.7. Chapter Conclusions ............................................................................................ 64 4 Survey of 90 Hotels in Greece ...................................................................................... 67 3 4.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 67 4.2. Methodology ....................................................................................................... 67 4.3. Location of hotels ................................................................................................ 68 4.4. Operation ............................................................................................................ 70 4.5. Number of beds ................................................................................................... 70 4.6. Year of construction ............................................................................................. 72 4.7. Building materials ................................................................................................ 73 4.8. Building systems .................................................................................................. 75 4.9. Energy management ............................................................................................ 77 4.10. Energy profile of 90 hotels ............................................................................... 78 4.11. Energy normalization ....................................................................................... 83 4.12. Average electrical and thermal energy consumption ........................................ 86 4.13. Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 86 5 Benchmarking and Energy Classification of the Hotel Sample ...................................... 90 5.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 90 5.2. Frequency distribution analysis ............................................................................ 90 5.2.1. Electricity consumption .................................................................................... 91 5.2.2. Oil consumption ............................................................................................... 91 5.3. Benchmarking and energy classification ............................................................... 92 5.4. Clustering algorithms ........................................................................................... 94 5.4.1. The k-means algorithm .................................................................................... 95 5.5. Clustering of the Greek hotels .............................................................................. 97 5.5.1. Matlab software..............................................................................................