In the context of climate change, reduction in operational energy of buildings has gained a prominent focus amongst researchers and practitioners. India and the U.S. have both used design strategies to provide comfortable indoor environments with no or marginal reliance on conventional energy sources, but often with significant differences in their
This paper documents the challenges and lessons learned from an extensive monitoring
study undertaken in India. It forms a part of a larger project that aims at formulating a set of
protocols of such field monitoring activity and evaluating the performance of selected passive
strategies. Observations were made for each stage of monitoring, from building selection to data
quality assurance. We found that many buildings were not necessarily constructed or operated as
originally designed vis-à-vis the passive strategies we were studying. In some cases the physical
components of a passive strategies were not maintained properly. Our experience also
emphasizes the importance of having a local champion in the building being monitored. We
realized the significance of understanding the trade-offs between the quality and extent of
instrumentation as well as the value of allowing flexibility in the monitoring plan to make realtime changes on site.