SMART SOLUTIONS FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY

The Five Seminar began with Ar Mili Mazumdar sharing an overall view of energy consumption in the building sector along with other important aspects like infrastructure, transport etc in a smart city. The Residential and commercial building sector contributes to about 30% of the nation's total electrical consumption and is growing at a rate to 12% today. This is quite concerning, however, if properly planned, we do have the knowledge potential to save and reduce this by the year 2021. The government has already taken quite a few steps to ensure proper energy management in the building sector by implementing various codes like the ECBC, Green rating for buildings - GRIHA, Promoting green buildings etc. Ar.Mazumdar, elaborated the function and importance such codes. The VVIP circuit house and the PNCTDA, Punewhich are few of the new examples for a well functioning green building, were seen as case studies for the same.

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Next, Ar Ruju Rathod shared insights on Integrating Passive and Active Strategies for energy management through anarchitectural perspective. We looked at four of her projects that had implemented such strategies. Simple passive strategies included, Orientation East West of buildings and calculating total solar radiation and day light. Also weighing options in terms of sizing and zoning buildings for large campuses for example single mass buildings vs. multiple buildings with multiple orientations were looked at. Other strategies included increased day litareas by added courtyards, terraces etc for required spaces. Implementation of such strategies not only reducedenergy consumption but also reduced overall cost of building maintenance and provided for better performance of spaces for its users.

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The third speaker, Mr Yogesh Khernar looked the topic through the case study of 'Smart Grid Initiative' at Amanora Township, Pune which is Inida's first 'Swadesi Smart City'. The notion of smart grid generally applies only to electricity.A smart grid basically refers to an electricity network that can efficiently integrate the behaviour and actions of allusers connected to it. We looked at how a smart gird is basically a micro grid which adds many more components tothe system as compared to a normal grid, making it more efficient.The four major aspects of a smart grid are, flexibility, accessibility, reliability and economic efficiency. These along withthe four principles (observable, controllable, automated and fully integrated) are part of the smart grid mission by theIndian Government. The last speaker, Ar Poorva Keskar, gave a more detailed insight to the Energy Conservation Building Code or ECBC. The ECBC, though an important code, hasn't been mandated in all states as yet. However just declaring a mandate for thecode isn't sufficient,

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proper knowledge about its need is what is going to help its overall success during implementation. The first step towards this would be relooking at the code, re working the climate zones within statesto identify which climate zone a region lies in. An important step was when the ECBC integrated with other green building needs which include other resources likeland, water etc. Ar Keskar, explains that a question that arises here is when mandated, who checks the compliance of abuilding to the ECBC codes? Will it be a local body? In Mahashtra, a 'Third Party Mode; assessor' has been implemented who audits the project at design stage itself. We further looked at the required bench marks for an ECBC compliance and the overall need and importance of the same.

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