Operations optimization towards high performance cooling in commercial buildings

In this paper, an analysis and evaluation of the operations of a typical shopping mall in Qatar was carried out. The aim is to optimize operations towards high energy performance with respect to cooling energy. For the study, a comparison of the energy consumption of two cooling system operation strategies, i.e., scheduled and unscheduled district cooling, for the shopping mall was conducted. Building operations strategies for improving cooling performance were identified, analyzed, simulated and evaluated. The study shows variations in the various performance measures associated with the cooling performance. A number of operational factors for optimizing cooling efficiency and effectiveness were identified and simulated. Simulation results show that building operations that focus on energy savings significantly contribute to high energy performance in commercial buildings. The analysis also showed that scheduling district cooling can result in 12.89% total annual energy savings.