Using the Ocean as an Energy Source

The hospital is beautifully situated by Drammensfjorden, and if the view doesn't make you feel better, you can reflect on the fact that the comfortable room temperature in the building comes from utilizing thermal energy from the sea.

Drammen Fjernvarme supplies the energy to the hospital via the energy centers in the basement of the building, with Drammensfjorden being the main energy source for the district heating center. Where the district heating pipes meet the hospital wall, AF Energi takes over the responsibility.

Kristoffer Laskemoen, Portfolio Manager at AF Energi, explains that the size of the project has led them to divide the follow-up of production and deliveries into areas and buildings, giving a lot of responsibility to dedicated area managers at AF Energi.

– It has been a very hectic progress for three years, where we have sometimes been in the completion phase in some buildings and just barely started in others. The size and number of components make it challenging. Therefore, good teamwork and good logistics have been the key to success for us, says Kristoffer Laskemoen.

Torstein Tveiten, Development Manager for Sykehusbygg, is pleased with AF Energi's work so far.

– We have chosen to build according to a digital model, which demands a lot from both the consultant and the contractor. Especially here, where we have encouraged prefabrication, which requires that the groundwork is very detailed and well-prepared early in the process. The detailing of the model was initially a challenge, but it was resolved well through collaboration among the involved parties, says Torstein Tveiten.

Tveiten, who comes from a family of plumbers, believes that what he has seen is of good quality, as it should be when building a hospital.

– It is fantastic to see the construction now. There are enormous amounts of pipes and pumps, and it is really well executed. We have no reason to believe otherwise; it is of good quality, says Torstein Tveiten.

AF Energija, a subsidiary of AF Energi in Kaunas, Lithuania, designs, assembles, and delivers prefabricated elements of energy centers. Prefabrication saves a lot of space and makes the work safer by performing much of the assembly and welding in the factory. This way, the design of the systems can be optimized without needing to allocate space for assembly and welding on the construction site. Recently, the design team from Lithuania visited the hospital to see the systems on-site.

– It is always useful to see the pipes installed on the site, especially because we see how much space we need for various components and to access them with different tools. This gives us important information when designing similar systems in the future, says Raminta Zapolskyte, an engineer at AF Energija.

– We are nearing mechanical completion and gradually winding down the work until Christmas. There are still some final touches to be made in the last zones, and then we will build, install, and start up the snow melting system on the helicopter platform, which was a small additional project we received before the summer. The remaining work involves starting up, testing, and balancing the heating and cooling systems throughout the hospital, a very extensive process, before the planned handover in 2025, says Kristoffer Laskemoen.

AF Energi's contract for the New Hospital in Drammen is 200 million NOK, and the work started in March 2022.

– It's fun to work with energy centers. We call them the heart of the building," says Liv Irene Korstad, who is the site manager for AF Energi.

• 88 kilometers of pipes for the heating and cooling distribution network
• 1800 radiators
• 26 kilometers of pipes for the snow melting system
• 27 kilometers of pipes for underfloor heating in 377 rooms
• Heating capacity: 5375 kW
• Cooling capacity: 4881 kW
• Technical cooling capacity: 1644 kW
• Snow melting capacity: 1930 kW