Authors: Palak Patel, Mona Iyer, Sachin.S, Rajan Rawal
Abstract:
The initiatives taken for energy efficiency in India have largely focused on street lighting, water pumping for irrigation, energy-intensive industries, and the building sector. Studies on the building sector have explored the relationship between built form and energy consumption in terms of solar energy, heat energy demand, and passive cooling. However, there is limited empirical research on municipal ser-vices like water pumping at the building level. This study aims at investigating the energy efficiency in water services at the building level, through establishing the relationship between urban morphology and electricity consumption for pumping the water in Ahmedabad city. Focusing on the aspect of urban resilient planning, various factors of urban morphology were explored such as building height, total population, floor space area, age of the building. To establish the relationship, the electricity consumed to pump water from the ground to the terrace level was measured for residential building typologies of low rise, mid-rise and high rise. The results obtained from the study show that there is a significant impact of building height on the per capita energy consumption for pumping water. This suggests that the high-rise buildings are more energy-intensive compared to low-rise and mid-rise typologies. The total population is higher in low-rise and high-rise compared to mid-rise typology, hence the relationship acquired between total population and per capita electricity use is stronger for mid-rise buildings. The age of the building and floor space area have an insignificant influence on the electricity used to pump water
