Global energy transition is on a fast track and India is not far behind. India’s commitment towards reduction of emissions intensity by 30-35 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 poses a significant challenge to the industry. Strong policy interventions along with heightened investments in sustainable energy remain the major catalyst of energy transition in developing countries. Energy-efficiency is crucial to India’s goal to provide its people with reliable, affordable, secure, and sustainable access to energy. Sustainability is the need of the hour and several initiatives are under implementation to work towards a low-carbon economy. One of them is the adoption of the green building concept. The construction industry has a significant footprint in the consumption of resources such as energy, water and material, and generates a significant amount of waste, which has a significant impact on the environment. The leapfrog of urbanisation in the past decade has necessitated a more responsible and sustainable approach towards the construction of buildings. The green building movement has made rapid advancements since its inception in 2001. The adoption of ‘green’ in all aspects of design and construction has been embraced by stakeholders such as architects, developers, MEP contractors and green building consultants, builders, suppliers and manufacturers. Creating benchmarks Recently, a new benchmark was created in the field of ‘Performance Monitoring’ of energy and water systems in buildings. The Plant-13 Annexe Building, part of Godrej & Boyce’s Vikhroli campus in Mumbai, was awarded the IGBC Performance Challenge 2019 for Green Buildings - Excellence Award, which celebrates operational efficiency of green-certified buildings. Attaining a ‘Net-Zero’ status is only the beginning, but maintaining it is a challenge. Plant-13 Annexe is a multiple-use office and convention centre and, over the years, this building has demonstrated consistency in performance. George Menezes, COO, Electricals and Electronics, Godrej & Boyce, shares more on how the project has been designed and constructed…. Strong planning Existing buildings far outnumber new ones. The idea, therefore, behind IGBC-EB (Indian Green Building Council-Existing Building), IGBC NZEB and BEE 5-Star certifications for existing buildings was to demonstrate the fact that with an incremental investment and some smart efforts, it is possible to improve the operational performance efficiency—energy, water, waste management—of the building’s systems. A well-planned process of systems integration has been applied at the Plant-13 Annexe Building, right from the conceptual design stage, and carried forward in the operations of the building. Environment-benign features as per green building principles had been incorporated during the design stage; for example, the building envelope demonstrating good thermal properties, glazing, insulation on the roof, native and adaptive landscape, energy and water-efficiency, and material management, among others. Also, all the materials used for the project were from the Godrej ecosystem—local and green. To get the building operational, several teams were involved. Godrej Electricals & Electronics, along with Godrej Construction, and its Audio Visual Solutions, worked together with the architect to ensure timely delivery. Monthly reviews and SOPs for all tasks further contributed. Together, teams would meet and update on progress. This was critical to making the building operational. Software success Godrej & Boyce made use of software for the building’s simulation to understand possible operational conditions and work out the base case for energy consumption in the building. Another software was used to monitor energy end-use at a system level. There are about 30 energy meters installed to monitor energy at an equipment and entity level. The idea behind using data informatics was to have insightful and actionable information on the operations of the building. Further enhancement of this system is being planned to institutionalise the mapping of energy data in real time. This aspect is critical to understand energy consumption in the real-time operations of the building’s systems. Renewable energy generation is also monitored on a real-time basis and has trend and historical reports that assist the facility team in analysing the performance of the system. Overcoming specialty challenges The design brief for heat load in the building was in a range from 10 per cent to 100 per cent. Chillers were selected to handle the vast variance of the heat load. Two 250 tr and two 125 tr water-cooled chillers (redundancy of one chiller in both capacities) were installed. This has resulted in quantum energy savings by rendering flexibility in operation of either the 250 tr and 125 tr chillers or both, as per the heat load demand in the building. Further, tracking performance of the solar system on a daily basis has resulted in optimising the performance of the system. In terms of lighting, the project switched over to LED from conventional PL or CFL lamps. And the kitchen blowers were retrofitted with VFDs. Speaking of challenges faced, stakeholder engagement at various levels posed a significant challenge to sustain the efforts undertaken on performance monitoring. As the building has a history of nine years of operations, the team has scheduled an energy audit of the air-conditioning system to have a detailed scientific assessment of the performance of every equipment and system as a whole. The rough estimate indicates an energy-savings potential of 15 per cent with regard to current energy levels. Maintenance all the way The operations and maintenance are taken care of by an in-house team at Godrej. With chillers being a critical and highly technical equipment in the air-conditioning systems, the team has an AMC with the OEM. The Plant-13 Annexe Building has won several accolades, including the IGBC-EB Platinum Rating under the Existing Building certification and the BEE 5-Star Rating, which further certifies the building to a Minimum Energy Performance. With the IGBC Net-Zero Rating, the building has achieved the unique status of being self-sustainable by being fully powered by onsite and offsite renewable energy sources. The award was a result of the efforts put in by the Energy Conservation (ENCON), Green Building Consultancy Services (GBCS) team of Godrej Electrical and Electronics along with the Godrej Construction team, Plant 13 Annexe Facilities team and Corporate Personnel & Administration team. - SERAPHINA D’SOUZA Impact on operational cost By virtue of design of the Plant-13 Annexe Building, most of the building spaces are exposed to natural daylight. The design of a centralised air-conditioning system had taken into account the diversity of occupation of the building. System-level monitoring and analytics of HVAC, lighting, ventilation, energy consumption and solar PV generation on a daily basis resulted in the identification of potential energy-saving opportunities as well as control of operations. An investment of Rs 0.15 million to institutionalise a system=level metering system has yielded significant benefits by way of monitoring and control of wasteful energy in the building. Energy consumption reduction since the past two years: 7 per cent Energy cost reduction since the past two years: 8 per cent Total energy from renewable sources (rooftop solar PV): 8 per cent. An investment of about Rs 0.8 million towards metering, lighting retrofits and VFD on blower has resulted in savings of Rs 0.8 million per annum. And the investment has paid back within one year. The total time taken for retrofit was six months.