Ocean Park Building once was known as the first prize winner in the competition “Energy efficiency Building” organized by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and having received a Merit from Ha Noi people’s committee in acknowledgment of its achievements in energy efficiency activities in 2009. More recently, in the competition ASEAN Efficient Energy Management 2010, Ocean Park Building also won prizes, asserting its position as well as bringing honor to Vietnam as the host country.

Hanoi International Marine Trade Center Building – Ocean Park (located at number 1 Dao Duy Anh Street, Dong Da District, Ha Noi) was built in 2001 and put into operation in early 2004. With a total floor area of 34,640 sqm, having 21 stories including a commercial center and office blocks, the building consumes a huge amount of energy annually.

Mr. Vu Sinh, a member of Project Office of HPM Company – managing unit of the Ocean Park building, said: “Since its early days, the building’s board of directors has attached great importance to the effective operation and management of energy in the building. Therefore many management solutions have been issued and several technical solutions have been applied to achieve this target. Some of the solutions that we have applied proved to be highly efficient and can become the pioneering models for other buildings to follow.”

Bold investment

Playing the particular role of a commercial center and office blocks, Ocean Park building uses electricity as its main power source. Therefore, the focus of its energy efficiency solutions is how to reduce the amount of energy used for operation.

Energy saving activities has been a concern among members of board of directors of Ocean Park since the very early days when it was just put into operation. Most noticeably, in the period from 2006 to 2009, by using effective and thorough energy saving solutions, the building saved a total amount of 780,000 Kwh.

Aware of the fact that the air conditioning system is always the most electricity-consuming part of the building, managers of the building decided that the first solution to save energy should be installing the BMS controlling system to control the amount of energy consumption of the air conditioning.

With this solution, the building can save about 152,000 Kwh per year. However installing such a system is not a common solution for most businesses since the initial investment can be as much as VND700 million.

In addition, Ocean Park has recently used insulation film for the building’s glass windows in order to reduce the amount of heat absorbed, performed a periodic maintenance for its air conditioning system and installed an automatic adjustment program to adjust operating hours and temperature appropriately according to seasons, weeks and days. With those solutions, the amount of electricity saved is over 328,000 kWh per year.

With the lighting system, Ocean Park installed different types of energy saving lighting bulbs for different areas. The meeting room is equipped with 26W, 18W Downlight lamps; the office area uses fluorescent lamps 3x18W with reflecting lamp shades, highly efficient electronic blasters to save more electricity. Finally, compact lighting bulbs with capacity of 13W, 18W and 26W are used for corridor areas. The installation of highly efficient lighting lamps reportedly helps the building save about 83,000 kWh per year, equivalent to VND83 million. Although this is only a simple technical solution, with such a large number of lamps, the initial investment costs could amount to VND250 million. It is estimated that the business can recover capital after one and a half year.

Because Ocean Park is also used as an office building, the architect team paid special attention to natural lighting not only to provide enough lighting for working and achieve aesthetic requirements but also to reduce the amount electricity used for lighting. Besides, the special system of VND150 million has an automatic switching mode for each particular period to suit working condition, reducing energy consumption by over 49,000 kWh per year.

In addition to those solutions which have high investment costs, many simple, low-cost technical solutions are also used, for example installing an automatic system to control all electronic equipment during peak hours, adjusting the operating modes of elevator to suit particular working conditions or using an automatic time and temperature adjusting system for the local air conditioning system. These have proved to be no less effective than those costly methods.

Focusing on energy management
 
Besides the above technical solutions, the Board of Directors also attaches great importance to effective energy management within the Company. To achieve this goal, the managing unit of the building applies its own method in order to improve energy efficiency by establishing a Department for Energy Management, in which the building’s director is also the general manager of all energy issues. The manager is then responsible for deciding, approving and implementing energy efficiency schemes to apply to the building’s equipments.

The Department for Energy Management includes chief engineers, who have the responsibility for holding meetings and preparing a periodic report on energy consumption situation of the building for every weekly briefing session, updating and reporting regularly on energy efficiency activities as well as planning and defining new saving targets for the following period. In addition, various seminars and training workshops on using energy efficiently are regularly organized.

Along with manual energy management, Ocean Park also achieves efficient energy usage by using controlling devices such as developing a system of gauges, using controlling software to monitor and control electricity consumption of the building. Low voltage cabinet room of the building has two electric gauges installed in order to control the use of electricity and reduce the amount electricity consumption during peak hours.

The amount of energy consumed by every customer is monitored by an assistant electricity meter. The repair and installation of electrical supply route for new customers is performed both securely and conveniently, to ensure that no other customer is affected. Customers of Ocean Park are encouraged to use electricity efficiently so as to reduce their operating expenses.

In order to thoroughly apply the energy efficiency solutions proposed by controlling department, a range of detailed operating procedures for equipment using energy in the building and working procedures for each department as well as each worker, have been built so as to improve every one’s awareness of energy efficiency.

Managers of Ocean Park Building have shown their responsibility for the society by having successfully applied many effective solutions and creative methods in saving and using energy efficiently. For all of their achievements, Ocean Park Building deserves to be the representative of Viet Nam to be honored in the two competitions “Energy efficiency Building” and “ASEAN Efficient Energy Management 2010”.

Hopefully, from the successful managing model of energy efficiency used in Ocean ParkBuilding, in the future there will be more enterprises, buildings in Viet Nam applying the saving measures to reduce energy costs and improve their competitiveness, and most importantly to attain a common goal of sustainable development.

By Nguyen An