ABSTRACT
High-rise housing, a trend in densely populated cities around the world, increases energy use for water supply and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions. This paper presents an energy efficiency evaluation measure for water supply system designs and demonstrates its applications in a typical water supply system installation of buildings. The energy efficiency for water supply system operation is the potential energy of the water demands in buildings divided by the required pumping energy. To demonstrate that the measure is useful for establishing optimal design solutions that integrate energy consumption into urban water planning processes that cater to various building demands and usage patterns, measurement data of high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong were used. The results showed that this measure could serve as a useful benchmark reference for water supply system designs and establish demand management programs for buildings.
