Commercial AC System Alternatives for a Case Study Hotel Building in Hot Climate Country: An Inclusive Comparison Analysis

Air conditioning (AC) systems are the main energy-significant services in hotel buildings. There is, therefore, remarkable potential to increase energy efficiency use of the hotel AC systems by optimization of both their system selection and operational characteristics. This paper presents an inclusive evaluation of commercial AC systems that can be appropriately functional for a case study star hotel. The hotel considered consists of resorts and villas of cooling load as high as 2400 tons of refrigeration. Site investigation, AC-specified characteristic review, and numerical approach were applied. The evaluation involved operational characteristics, coefficient of performance, and power and energy use per year. The evaluation results showed, for hotel building application, the central AC systems which generally have better diversity factor, could provide flexibility in installed system capacity. The results also showed that the water-cooled chiller system could perform with higher COP compared to the other AC systems. Additionally, the annual energy efficiency of the water-cooled chiller system was also found very superior with energy savings more than 50%. After central water-cooled chiller system, it was found that a modular water-cooled chiller system could also provide an excellent energy performance. Finally, the evaluation results can provide the most suitable AC system alternatives, specifically in hot climate country applications, to hotel facility consultants, hotel building contractors, and hotel owners.