Almost Rs 50 lakh annual savings can be made from the energy bill of Vidhana Soudha, just by replacing the inefficient lighting and refrigeration units.

This is what an energy audit just completed by the Petroleum Conservation Research Association reveals. The amount of savings is much more with the BWSSB, whose huge pump sets are old and inefficient, according to the PCRA which has done the audit there too.

Up to 15-20 percent savings is possible at most of the big buildings like hospitals, hotels, malls and IT offices.
"All it requires is a few simple changes," V V Sharma, regional coordinator told Deccan Herald. The average usage by commercial buildings is 200 kwh per sq km and this can easily be brought down to 120-160 kwh, he added.
While the replacements involve some capital investment, the pay back period is within a year or two, Sharma said. This period refers to the time required to make up for the costs, after which there is only savings.

Case study
This has been proved in case studies. "At a five star hotel in Cochin, we could bring annual savings of Rs 75,000 just by placing occupancy linked sensors in a single lobby toilet! The lighting time was reduced from 24 hours to six hours. The investment cost was Rs 18,000 but pay back period, a mere three months."

So also in another building, replacing the 36 W fluorescent lamp with copper choke 28 W fluorescent lamp led to Rs 3 lakh saved annually. While the initial investments was Rs 7 lakh, the pay back period was two years.
The commercial sector's share of electrical consumption is around 6.6 per cent and this was growing at a rate of 12 per cent, he told the audience earlier during the seminar on 'energy efficiency measures in building clusters' organised in the City on Saturday by the PCRA, a society under the aegis of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India.

Ripe time
Currently the Energy Conservation Building Code, 2006 brought out by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency has guidelines for commercial buildings with connected load of over 500 KW. While it is voluntary now, the bureau sees a scope of saving 1.7 billion units if the code is implemented.

With buildings accounting for almost 40 per cent of the energy budget, and the construction industry in India growing at a rate of 9.2 per cent per annum, the time is ripe for change. The conference was an attempt to send across the message of energy efficient buildings to builders and architects.

Ravi Capoor, executive director, PCRA, referred to a recent Mckenzie Global Institute study, which said that if we use existing resources efficiently, we can reduce energy demand by half by 2020. "Energy productivity is what we need to focus on, to make sure of returns on energy." Critical of the glass buildings sprouting everywhere in cities like Bangalore, "glass is energy inefficient and traps heat. We shouldn't be using these in the tropics. Why can't escalators in malls be sensor-based," he wondered.

He told the audience that since the 1973 oil shocks, Japan's energy needs have remained at the 1974 levels in spite of a growing industry simply because "they got into the energy efficiency act".

Capoor felt that like the energy labelling started for certain items, buildings too needed some kind of rating. In going green, not only is there savings in the bill but also making amends for climate change.

Efficient electrical devices alone can bring in Rs 1 crore savings for Vidhana Soudha, said R Srinivasan of IISc. Also present was Bharat Lal Meena, MD, KPTCL, who noted that power consumption showed a 20 per cent rise in the last two years. Projecting it to the future, he said it was not possible to add the required capacity.

Ramesh Babu, Winrock, gave specific case studies showing that energy efficiency can bring as much as Rs 50 lakh in savings for bills totalling Rs 300 lakh!