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Sign upJuly 13, 2022
Tahiti Hospital
Papeete
In July 2022, the Centre Hospitalier de Polynésie Française (CHPF, the Tahiti Hospital) in Tahiti inaugurated the world’s largest Seawater Air Conditioning (SWAC) system, a milestone in sustainable infrastructure. Planned since 2012, the USD 30 million project was funded by the French Development Agency, the European Investment Bank, the France Energy Transition Agency, and the French Polynesian government. The system draws seawater from 900 meters depth at ~5°C, transporting it via a 3.8 kilometers (2.36 miles) pipeline to heat exchangers that cool a closed-loop freshwater system for air conditioning, with minimal ecological impact from seawater discharge.
SWAC systems, initially implemented for hotels, have demonstrated the long-term viability of deep seawater cooling in tropical environments. The Tahiti hospital / CHPF installation, being 2.5 times larger than the earlier hotel systems, builds upon this well-established foundation.
By reducing energy use from 9 GWh to just 0.7 GWh annually - a 93% drop - this system saves over USD 3 million each year in electricity costs, with an estimated 8-year payback. Its carbon footprint is offset within the first year, preventing over 5,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually and reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels. The system eliminates harmful refrigerants, while improving hospital working conditions and patient comfort. It also frees up funds for healthcare reinvestment.
Today, with the SWAC system, we have reduced our consumption to 700 MWh per year (vs over 9000 MWh before), which represents a drastic 93% decrease in the electricity used for air conditioning at CHPF… it’s tremendous.
Telomere Mu, CTO at Tahiti Hospital
In tropical environments especially, demand for air conditioning is high all year round. This typically comes at a high energy cost, which is in turn typically produced from non-renewable sources. In certain industries and buildings, such as hotels for tourism or hospitals for healthcare, air-conditioning is frequently the largest single usage of energy, representing up to 40% of total consumption. This solution aims to drastically reduce the amount of energy consumed to produce air conditioning while using a renewable natural source of cold. The solution could be implemented anywhere with suitable bathymetry and easy access to deep ocean water and strong AC needs. The concept of the solution is to give the opportunity to have cool air when needed, while considerably decreasing the energy consumption and our carbon footprint. The solution is a Sea Water Air Conditioning (SWAC) system. This system permits to save about 42% of energy comparing to a conventional AC system. It uses the temperature of the deep ocean to cool an AC loop, releasing seawater back to the ocean with no impact. This solution sends a 2,6km piping into the ocean to reach a 930m deep area. The impact on the environment is very low and safe - It provides air conditioning using the cold of the deep ocean.
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