Investigation and prediction of Energy consumption at St. Olavs Hospital

¹ Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NO-7041, Trondheim Norway
² School of Civil Engineering Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400045, China
³ St. Olavs Hospital, NO-7041, Trondheim, Norway 12.03.2021

Abstract

The objective of this study is to evaluate and predict the energy use in different buildings during COVID-19 pandemic period at St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim. Based on machine learning, operational data from St. Olavs hospital combined with weather data will be used to predict energy use for the hospital.

Analysis of the energy data showed that the case buildings at the hospital did not have any different energy use during the pandemic this year compared to the same period last year, except for the lab center. The energy consumption of electricity, heating and cooling is very similar both in 2019 and 2020 for all buildings, but in 2020 during the pandemic, the lab center had a reduction of 35% in electricity, compared to last year. An analysis of the energy needed for heating and cooling in the end of June to the end of November was also calculated for operating room 1 and was estimated to 256 kWh/m2 for operation room 1.

The machine learning algorithms perform very well to predict the energy consumption of case buildings, Random Forest and AdaBoost proves as the best models, with less than 10% margin of error, some of the models have only 4% error.

An analysis of the effect of humidification of ventilation air on energy consumption in operating room 1 was also carried out. The impact on energy consumption were high in winter and will at the coldest periods be able to double the energy consumption needed in the ventilation.