Naturally bright: Changi Village Hotel taps natural lighting with large glass panels THE Changi Village Hotel was managed by Le Meridien up until 2001, when its owner, the Far East Organization, decided to take it back under active control and undertake a major revamp. In 2004, the hotel emerged with a hundred extra new rooms and a new, naturally-lit look.
The hotel took the chance to replace its old diesel boiler and chiller systems - which would not have kept up with the increased load - with 'reverse refrigerant cycle' equipment that effectively produces hot water and cold air at the same time.
It thus improved energy intensity by 20 per cent to a current 372 KWh per square metre of gross floor area, according to Chia Swee Cheng, assistant director of the Central Engineering & Operations Department at Far East.
The chiller system now uses no more than 0.7 KWh of electricity per tonne of chilled water, a vast improvement over the 1.2 KWh/tonne it used before. A significant part of the energy savings came from switching to hydrocarbon-based refrigerants, said Mr Chia.
Hydrocarbons are naturally occurring gases that were used as early refrigerants in the 1930s but abandoned when found to be flammable. The industry switched to non-flammable fluorine gases, but had to find alternatives yet again when these were found to damage the ozone layer in the 1970s. Unfortunately, these non-ozone depleting alternatives have been found to cause global warming, which has led the industry back to finding ways to safely use hydrocarbons.
Another improvement is a building management system to control the chiller system, which was previously manually operated.
However, since the revamp in 2004, Changi Village has not attempted other energy efficiency initiatives, as it had planned to operate the hotel for a 'testing period' of two to three years to observe the building's performance, said Mr Chia. But he said it targets an energy intensity of 334 KWh/m2 (a 10 per cent reduction) within three years.
Mr Chia's department, formed in 2000, drives efficiency initiatives across the Far East group. 'Our corporate electricity bill across all properties in Singapore was $33 million; imagine if we can cut that by 10 per cent,' - said Mr Chia Swee Cheng, assistant director of the Central Engineering & Operations Department at Far East
To this end, the hotel - and the group at a broader level - is looking to further improve chiller efficiency, such as by using a German 'ball clearing system' that unclogs condenser tubes. It will also experiment with waterless flushing systems, or using NEWater for cooling purposes.
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