Energy saving in Helsinki Zoo
Basic information
Project ID: AEE-2017-12
Students: Janne Lappi, Mikko Poranen, Laura Syvänne, Ville Kärnä, Miro Rosenström
Project manager: Janne Lappi
Instructor: Jaakko Ketomäki
Other advisors: Jari Viinanen, Petteri Huuska, Marjo Priha, Sonja-Maria Ignatius
Starting date: 5.1.2017
Completion date: 28.5.2017
Objective
The goal of Helsinki City is to make Korkeasaari zoo carbon neutral by 2025. This student group participated in the project by exploring possibilities to decrease the energy consumption of the zoo. The objective was to find out the current situation regarding energy consumption in the zoo, provide suggestions on how to decrease it and also create a communication plan for showing the upcoming new green values to the public in the zoo.
Summary of results
In order to save energy, the first thing is having proper measurement data. Without it is difficult to evaluate whether a building or a device is consuming an excessive amount of electricity or not.
Energy efficiency of building has improved significantly over a few decades. Korkeasaari has a lot of old buildings which means that renovating them with modern technologies will decrease the demand of heating energy. Exhaust heat recovery system will have a remarkable effect on the waste of heating energy as well. It is also essential to ensure that building automation is properly configured. There are examples of wasting energy for cooling a building over wintertime.
Heat pumps have a lower carbon footprint than district heating. Only 5-7 % increase in district heating operating costs would make it profitable from economical point of view to switch to heat pumps. In electrically heated spaces heat pumps are definitely a good choice.
Replacing all kind of old light bulbs to LEDs will decrease the electricity consumption of lighting. It is a significant segment of the total electricity consumption when there are powerful outdoor lighting like in Korkeasaari. Smart automation including motion detectors will minimize the operating time of lighting in buildings. Daylight integration is an innovative system which harvests sunlight inside buildings via fiber optics and mirrors. It would be interesting also considering promotion value.
Demand response basically does not save energy but it increases the utilization of environmentally friendly energy production in the power system. Demand response possibilities for small consumption points like a separate building in Korkeasaari are going to improve in the near future. Thus it is a good idea to prepare for that by updating building automation control systems at the same time when renovating building structures.
Documents
Appendix 2: Report for Korkeasaari.pdf