Solar cooling potential in tourist complexes in the North Aegean

Heating, cooling and domestic hot water in buildings have high energy demands and they are associated with direct and indirect environmental problems through pollutant emissions. A dramatic increase of the installed air conditioning systems in buildings is observed during the last years. The dominant practice is that air conditioning applications rely exclusively on electrical energy while the exploitation of solar energy is mainly for domestic hot water, with few applications on space heating and very limited on space cooling. This practice is associated with vertical increase of the electricity peakload during summer months, a fact that is very intense in the islands due to the high tourist season during these months. Tourism is a very significant development parameter for the islands of North East Aegean but the increased tourist activities are associated with multiple environmental problems, one of them attributed to the increased energy demand. One of the main building applications that are responsible for the energy demand problems during summer is air-conditioning applications. In the context of this paper, the potential for solar applications, mainly for space cooling but also combined with space heating and hot water are investigated for the tourist sector in the Northern East Aegean area. Based on the results of energy audits and calculations of 3 hotel complexes in the Chios island and collection of data about the hotel building stock in the island of Northern East Aegean, an assessment is made for the potential of economic feasible solar cooling applications in the hotel sector in this geographical area.