©2025 This excerpt taken from the article of the same name which appeared in ASHRAE Journal, vol. 67, No. 3, March 2025.
Award of Engineering Excellence: Artificial Intelligence Transforms Shopping Mall
By Jill Leung, Ethan Poon and Felix Chan
Jill Leung is a project engineer and Felix Chan is an associate at Arup in Hong Kong. Ethan Poon is an assistant chief project and maintenance manager at MTRC in Hong Kong.
Since its establishment in 2007, ELEMENTS has been a prominent shopping mall located atop Kowloon Station in Hong Kong, covering more than 1 million ft2 (92 900 m2). In line with the Science-Based Target (SBT) decarbonization commitment of its owner, ELEMENTS sought to improve energy efficiency and enhance the overall occupant experience. With a significant cooling capacity exceeding 7,000 tons (25 MW), ELEMENTS underwent progressive digital transformation featuring artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize energy efficiency and indoor comfort. This transformation included data quality assessment and retro-commissioning (RCx) by the consultant to optimize operations through a digital platform. The RCx process achieved more than an 8% reduction in chiller plant energy consumption within the first year of AI implementation while further elevating customer satisfaction.
Retro-commissioning was conducted at the onset of the project to evaluate system performance and identify the building’s operational improvement opportunities (OIO). During this evaluation, several areas of potential system OIOs were identified. These observations were used as labeled data to train the AI model, ensuring that building equipment and systems operated cohesively to maximize efficiency without compromising functionality and thermal comfort. The collected data enabled the AI model to simulate optimal plant operations based on historical trends and recommend configurations that achieve the highest COP throughout the day while ensuring operational stability.
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