The incorporation of the study into water consumption in energy audits in schools

Abstract

The approach of energy audits usually disregards the study of water as it considers that the supply does not involve energy consumption within the building. This paper aims to make visible both the energy footprint involved in ensuring safe water for human consumption and the collection and treatment of waste water. Furthermore, a methodology for conducting an energy audit is shown for the study of water consumption and applies it to a school to verify whether the measures proposed to reduce the consumption of water and the energy associated to it are viable. A school is chosen for three reasons. It is medium sized so the results can be extrapolated to other buildings. It presents a relevant water consumption due to the number of users, but without it being as high as a swimming pool might be. Finally it does not have a water heating system (there are no showers in the gym) so it only studies the energy consumption associated with drinking water without incorporating the effects of energy consumption for water heating.Key words: Water, energy audit, energy efficiency, sustainability, school. ResumenEl planteamiento de las auditorías energéticas al uso habitualmente prescinde del estudio del agua al considerar que dicho suministro no conlleva un consumo de energía dentro del edificio. El presente trabajo pretende visibilizar la huella energética que supone disponer de agua apta para el consumo humano así como la recogida y tratamiento de las aguas una vez han sido usadas. Adicionalmente se muestra una metodología para la realización de la auditoría energética en cuanto al estudio del consumo de agua se refiere y se aplica a un centro docente para verificar si las medidas que se proponen para reducir el consumo de agua y de energía asociado al mismo son viables. Se escoge un centro docente para el estudio por tres motivos: tiene un tamaño medio por lo que sus resultados son extrapolables a otros edificios; presenta un consumo de agua significativo debido al número de usuarios, pero sin resultar tan elevado como pudiera ser una piscina; finalmente, no dispone de instalación de calentamiento de agua (no hay duchas en el polideportivo) por lo que se puede estudiar exclusivamente el consumo de energía asociado al consumo de agua sin incorporar los efectos del consumo energético para calentar el agua.

Metabolismo en los edificios. Estudio de medidas para el ahorro del consumo de agua en tres centros docentes en Madrid

“…De hecho, ya hay autores que han abordado la vinculación del agua con la energía (16), la relación entre agua y energía y entre agua y emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, destacando su importancia a escala urbana (17), y la utilización de energía a lo largo de los grandes sistemas de infraestructura convencionalmente utilizados para la captación, transporte y distribución de agua, además de para el tratamiento de las aguas usadas (18,19,20). consumo de agua y coste de dicho consumo.…”

Towards sustainable developing cities: A simplified forecasting model for sizing grid-tied PV using monthly electricity bills

“…The educational sector is by no means unaffected by the crisis and soaring costs and generally accommodate large number of people during the daytime and place a substantial burden on the grid and harbour substantial inefficiencies (Sanchez-Torija et al, 2017;Samuels and Booysen, 2019). A study (Van der Berg et al, 2011) reported on how the low quality of education provided in schools within disadvantaged communities can lead to exclusion and marginalisation, limiting the future prospects of learners from a young age (Van der Berg et al, 2011).…”

Fees and governance: Towards sustainability in water resources management at schools in post-apartheid South Africa

“…The majority of existing research on urban water demand management have focused on the residential sector, for example, demand forecasting (Adamowski et al, 2012;Bougadis et al, 2005;Donkor et al, 2012;Ghiassi et al, 2017;Ren and Li, 2016), demand modelling (Gurung et al, 2014;Jacobs and Haarhoff, 2004), general demand management (Kenney et al, 2008), and water usage management interventions (Datta et al, 2015;Dernoncourt and Lee, 2016;Fielding et al, 2012). There is limited research on the water demand in the non-residential or educational sectors despite the fact that these sectors can be high water consumers (Sánchez-Torija et al, 2017). Moreover, although historic water usage data has been used in several studies to model water usage patterns, there are several influential factors including socio-economic, political and climatic variables that have not been specifically taken into consideration (Botai et al, 2017;Donkor et al, 2012;Enqvist and Ziervogel, 2019;Muller, 2018;Scheba and Millington, 2018).…”