Research, Development and Training

Insecure and informal access to energy impacts on all aspects of life for poor communities living in sub-standard housing in the global South. Access to affordable, reliable and safe forms of energy services has particularly profound effects on health and economic opportunities. However, the ways in which these communities’ access and use energy in their day-to-day lives are poorly understood.

As data-driven approaches to energy planning, such as Urban Building Energy Models (UBEMs), gain increasing importance as planning tools, this lack of understanding risks further marginalising the most vulnerable communities as their needs are either entirely overlooked or planned solutions fail to address their needs.

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Room Air Conditioners (RACs) are one of the most significant energy loads in modern buildings. With the warming climes and increasing RAC use, typically in the tropics, it was pertinent to address the cooling challenge through a leapfrogging international initiative in the Global Cooling Prize (GCP).

GCP was initiated with an aim to identify and scientifically evaluate the novel RAC technologies from across the world which were scalable, cost-effective, and had at least five times lower climate impact than the market-available RACs. A scaled adoption of such RAC technologies reserves the opportunity to reduce up to 100 gigatons of CO2-equivalent emissions by 2050 and help mitigate up to 0.5°C of global warming by 2100 while ensuring affordable access to a comfortable indoor thermal environment.

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India, with a population of nearly 1.2 billion, is the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas emitter. It has pledged to reduce carbon emission per unit of gross domestic product up to 35% by 2030 from the 2005 level. The building sector is experiencing unprecedented growth leading to higher energy consumption (Govt of India, 2015). India’s electricity demand is expected to rise from 775 TWh in 2012 to 2499 TWh by 2030. Estimates by National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) indicate that the mitigation activities for moderate low carbon development would cost India around USD 834 billion till 2030 at 2011 prices (de Dear, Leow, & Foo, 1991). With an increase in affordability and power supply, the future shall see a steep rise in demand for air conditioning. By 2030, 60% of commercial space and 40% of residential households in India are expected to be air-conditioned. The space cooling systems adopted in developing nations like India have a great impact on the economy as well greenhouse gas emissions.

The ISO and ASHRAE thermal comfort standards are used to design space conditioning systems, where the systems operate at 22.5 ± 1°C. The ASHRAE 55-2010 standard includes an adaptive thermal comfort model to differentiate the thermal response of occupants in air-conditioned and naturally ventilated buildings. However, until now there has been a lack of a contextual model for adaptive thermal comfort for India, even though a large proportion of existing as well as new buildings are either fully naturally ventilated or use natural ventilation for most of the year, supplemented by air-conditioning.

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Energy security, climate change and economic growth are matters of international importance which are affecting billions of people globally. One of the most significant global development challenge is how we mitigate against the proliferation of energy intensive air-conditioning (AC) for cooling and ventilation in buildings in response to a globally warming world and the greater expectations for thermal comfort in buildings. This is particularly pertinent in developing countries such as India as disposable income increases, making AC easily accessible. Many of India’s most populous metropolises such as Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta have hot and humid climates, and growth rates in the use of AC is seen at approximately 30% per year. The electricity demand for space cooling comprises up to 60% of the summer peak load in large cities like New Delhi, and most air-conditioners are inefficient and use refrigerants with high GWP (Global Warming Potential). This makes energy efficiency and thermal comfort a priority area for the Indian government which reflects in recent revisions of its National Building and Energy Conservation Building Codes which emphasize the need to design buildings for Natural Ventilation (NV) and Mixed Mode (MM) operation.

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Through the Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE) Research program, a five-year joint U.S. India Center for Building Energy Research and Development (CBERD) was created to advance buildings energy efficiency in both nations.UC Berkeley (USA) and CEPT University (India) jointly proposed the United States–India CBERD program. The main focus of CBERD during the duration of five years (2012-2017) was to conduct collaborative research that results into reduction in energy use in buildings.

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The main aim of the Centre for Excellence in Solar Passive Architecture and Green Building Technologies established at CEPT University with support from Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), was to frame strategies for developing energy efficient, low carbon and sustainable built environment using concepts of green architecture and integration of renewable energy systems. The specific objectives for the project duration of five year (2011-2016) were to enhance knowledge and develop a database of construction materials and practices for energy efficient buildings in India. Under the project  testing facilities and protocols as per standards were developed to characterize materials including glass and mirrors for their thermo-physical-optical properties.  Database for energy efficient built environment in India as per indigenize guidelines, codes and standards was generated. Extensive research was done   in energy policy with integrated approach to resource planning.  Existing curriculum was reviewed and recommendations were developed  based on feedback obtained from stakeholders. A living laboratory was established to develop concepts of Net-Zero Energy Technologies – construct technology demonstration building to house centre activities.  The implementation of GRIHA, ECBC and other codes, develop standards and labeling program for Fenestration, Insulation and Solar Thermal products were facilitated under the project. It also developed criteria for sustainable higher educational campuses and conduct post-occupancy evaluations. Conducted capacity building activities by developing e-lectures, training of trainers, organizing workshops on computer simulation and various related topics.

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The India specific adaptive model called IMAC developed by CEPTUniversity opens avenues for application of non-conventional cooling technologies for use ofbuildings in India. These technologies have the potential to provide comfort while requiring relatively lower amounts of operational energy. The study assesses the potential of energy savings by using such low energy cooling systems while maintaining a thermally comfortable environment inside buildings in India. The study focuses on standalone systems primarily used in residential or small commercial building sectorsIMAC is to be taken as reference to evaluate performance of selected systems in achieving thermal comfort.

CARBSE team have received R&D grant from Department of Science and Technology to improvise low energy cooling systems. Based on scientific rigor and market analysis, CARBSE envisages a definite document establishing energy saving potential due to such systems if deployed at large scale in India and a framework for evaluating such systems on common platform. Study provides an opportunity to understand potential to offset energy consumption by conventional HVAC system by deployment of low energy cooling systems. +

In the absence of space conditioning standard contextual to Indian context, the space conditioning systems for buildings are designed based on ISO and ASHRAE thermal comfort standards. Field observations have indicated that these systems often operate at 22.5 ± 1°C (72.5°F ± 1.8°F) all year round without adjusting to comfort needs of the occupants. Such operational practices are largely attributed to an increased expectation for stable comfort conditions.  In the absence of space conditioning standard contextual to Indian context, the space conditioning systems for buildings are designed based on ISO and ASHRAE thermal comfort standards. Field observations have indicated that these systems often operate at 22.5 ± 1°C (72.5°F ± 1.8°F) all year round without adjusting to comfort needs of the occupants. Such operational practices are largely attributed to an increased expectation for stable comfort conditions. 

India’s Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) references National Building Code for ventilation guidelines in naturally ventilated buildings, but it does not deal with conditioning requirements contextual to climate zones. In the ECBC user guide, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE, 2009) also recommends “Adaptive comfort model” as “additional information” to users.



However, the ECBC remains silent on the recommended temperature and humidity conditions for space conditioning of buildings for Indian climatic conditions.  CEPT, with support from SSEF and MNRE (Govt of India), has developed adaptive thermal comfort model contextual to climate conditions in India. This study addressed comfort expectations of office workers in naturally ventilated building, mixed mode buildings (buildings which rely on mechanical cooling systems to maintain thermal comfort only during adverse outdoor conditions) and air conditioned buildings Study found strong evidence that Indians can be comfortable at higher temperature than 24 degree centigrade fix temperature across the year. Study also indicates wider range of temperature adaptability of Indian subjects.

Deployment of adaptive thermal comfort standard is expected to save enormous amount of savings, however, no significant study has been carried out to understand larger benefit of such standard. Adaptive thermal comfort standard also will allow many other non-conventional, Low energy cooling technology to serve space cooling requirements. Identification of such technology will also make path of wider range of product availability in Market. Following graph illustrates that hot and dry climate, ECBC envelop can provide decrease in uncomfortable hours, remaining uncomfortable hours can be served with low energy cooling systems.

Impact of Energy Building Code at City level:

City administration consumes large amount of their financial resources on electricity to manage city level facilities such as street lights, water pumping, and their own buildings – hospitals, ward offices, and essential services. During CEPT’s study on Benchmarking of city administration buildings, it became apparent that the city administration does not have required processes and systems to take informed decision as well as to implement energy efficiency measures.

Local city governments are smallest and yet the most important units in implementation & enforcement of ECBC. To understand energy saving potential of implementation of ECBC at city level, city needs to collate data regarding new building construction and their probable usage. To link present land use, floor space character, future land use allocation, and future energy demand are essential to parameter to understand impact of energy efficiency in buildings. This also will be able to provide insight in to change in peak demand, which will be of interest to utility.

Presently, no such mechanism does exist to access information regarding available floor space and future addition in it. ULB do not have framework in place to collate this information. Few city level administrations have created energy conservation cells but they are not mandated to work in conjunction with Town development or estate offices, and hence do not focus on ECBC. It is important for city administrations to develop such processes to envisage benefits of ECBC implementations.

CARBSE proposes to study one city in detail to develop processes that can be practiced to achieve energy efficiency at buildings owned by city government and understand enforcement of ECBC at city level. +

In the absence of space conditioning standard contextual to Indian context, the space conditioning systems for buildings are designed based on ISO and ASHRAE thermal comfort standards. Field observations have indicated that these systems often operate at 22.5 ± 1°C (72.5°F ± 1.8°F) all year round without adjusting to comfort needs of the occupants. Such operational practices are largely attributed to an increased expectation for stable comfort conditions.

CEPT has developed adaptive thermal comfort model contextual to climate conditions in India. This study addressed comfort expectations of office workers in naturally ventilated building, mixed mode buildings (buildings which rely on mechanical cooling systems to maintain thermal comfort only during adverse outdoor conditions) and air conditioned buildings. Study found strong evidence that Indians can be comfortable at higher temperature the year with wider range of temperature adaptability of Indian subjects.

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Background: Building simulations and energy calculations based on detailed modeling form an extremely important tool for design and investigation of energy efficient buildings. Various building components and building forms can be tested for their performance to help for the design right at the start as well as analyse the performance of an existing building. These simulation methods also help formulate policy level decisions. However, when the results of such simulated building models are compared to on site measurements; there is bound to be differences. Simulation tools are developed across the world based on empirical data, research, computational skills and software development, yet it is believed and understood that discrepancies against actual measured data is inevitable. This huge gap in the knowledge database needs to be addressed and studied, especially for the Indian context. The idea is to study these differences and derive parallels relations between simulated data and on-site measured data.

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Net-Zero Energy Building (NZEB) is envisioned as a living laboratory for continuous and in-depth building energy-efficiency research. To achieve the goal, building design contains sophisticated and flexible control systems that can support continuous research experiments on building monitoring and performance optimization. The control system in the building is designed to meet the following 

objectives:
- To serve as a single platform for monitoring and controls in the building
- To provide testbed for development of new technologies and control algorithms
- To integrate with test chambers for effective operations and controls

Figure 1: Details of Monitoring, Integration and Controls Philosophy

Building control system continuously monitors installed components and uses efficient algorithms to optimize building performance. The building design incorporates sophisticated controls strategy such as demand ventilation, economizer based on enthalpy, chilled water reset, heat recovery wheel optimization algorithm, and chiller performance optimization.

The control system will also be able to configure various indoor comfort condition algorithms such as operation based on schedule, based on custom adaptive comfort equation, and based on equation of outdoor/indoor conditions, or based on PMV algorithm. Key energy and operational parameters would be continuously displayed on display screen located on the ground floor. +

Providing daylight in the spaces is crucial for energy conservation as well as health and wellbeing and improved work efficiency of human beings. Tubular Daylighting Devices (TDD – also called Light pipes) are simple means of directing daylight (diffuse and direct light) from the sky into interior spaces and provide natural light in those areas of the building with limited or no access to daylight. TDDs consist of three parts: outside collector, tube to transport daylight and a diffuser inside the room. CARBSE is developing a test facility to enable the testing of TDDs for VT (visible transmittance) and Solar Gain based on International Standards. The visible transmittance (VT) is an optical rating that determines how much light in the visible spectrum is transmitted through a window glazing or other fenestration. The VT measurement of a TDD must accommodate the geometrical complexity of light entering and exiting the device at angles that are more variable than those associated with flat window products. Therefore, an integrating sphere with two meter diameter, also known as Large Diameter Integrating Sphere (LDIS), is used. TDD is mounted on the LDIS and the lux meters placed inside the LDIS measure average distributed non-uniform light that enters the sphere from TDD sample. A single VT result will represent the total transmission integrated over all various output angles for a given solar incidence angle that can be adjusted by the positioning of the LDIS relative to the sun. +

Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Technology (CARBSE) has constructed a Mirror Box to create Artificial Sky conditions. A mirror box is used to simulate overcast sky conditions for building models, which can help architects and engineers to understand daylight inside the building and take necessary design decisions to increase building performance and reduce energy consumption for artificial lighting. A mirror box consists of an extremely bright homogenously lit ceiling and mirrored walls. The light source is a milky white diffusing acrylic sheet illuminated with over 6,000 LEDs behind. The mirrors, arranged vertically all around the periphery of the boxproduces an image of the lit ceiling by reflection and inter-reflection to infinity. The building model to be analysed for daylight performance is placed inside the mirror box and illuminance levels are measured using lux meters to determine daylight factor. +

Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Technology (CARBSE) is constructing Single Patch Sky Simulator which can be used to simulate Artificial Sky. It can create various sky conditions for building models to be analysed, which helps architects and engineers to understand daylighting inside the building and make necessary changes to the design and specifications of glazing to increase building performance and reduce energy consumption for artificial lighting. The system consists of a turntable, mirror and customized LED luminaire. Building model to be analysed for daylighting is fixed on turntable’s platform. Turntable can rotate the model about two axis. This turntable receives light from LED luminaire lamp after getting reflected from the mirror. The lamp emulates one sky patch out of the total 145 virtual divisions of the sky dome as per Tregenza’s model. Turntable rotates the model such that the lamp is positioned in each of the 145 divisions of the sky dome. For each division, illuminance levels are measured inside the space using lux meters. These measured readings are then combined and computed using algorithms to give daylight performance of the space. Schematic design and analysis are completed and execution is under process. +

Buildings contribute to greenhouse gas emissions more than the industrial or transportation sectors, primarily due to high energy demand and usage in air conditioning, heating and ventilation, driven by the basic human need for thermal comfort and good indoor air quality. The projects aims:
- to achieve a better understanding of human thermal comfort in residential and commercial buildings
- to explore opportunities for reducing energy demand through natural ventilation, mixed mode practices and other low energy techniques that provide air movement.

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Background: Given India’s rapid economic growth and concomitant expansion in its commercial sector, soaring demand for air-conditioned commercial buildings can be confidently predicted. This increased demand for air-conditioned buildings in India has been attributed to an increased expectation for stable comfort conditions as the workforce shifts away from an industrial production towards a service-orientation that is office-based. If permitted to grow unchecked, building air-conditioning will add immense pressure on electricity infrastructure and exacerbate the already extreme peak-demand problem in the country.In the absence of an adaptive thermal comfort standard specifically focused on India’s climatic and cultural context, the recent trend in India is to design air-conditioned office buildings (that often operate at 22.5 ± 1 °C all year round) to meet the “Class A” comfort specifications articulated in documents such as ISO 2005 and ASHRAE 55 for air-conditioned buildings. This approach may elevate Indian comfort expectations to levels that require unsustainable energy inputs, without substantially improving overall occupant comfort, satisfaction and productivity.

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Background: India is experiencing tremendous expansion in Building Construction Industry. Influx of new material has increased in last decade. Building Energy Efficiency and Integration of Renewable Energy Sources has become imperative to meet the global challenges. Building Materials play major role in achieving energy efficiency with the built environment. Number of computer models have been developed and are practiced across the country, which help professionals in envisaging future energy demand within and outside buildings.However, thermo-physical-optical property of locally available building materials is very limited and at the same time, the characterization of newly developed building material is also not very much in public domain. To enhance performance of building material and construction assembly, it is very essential that such knowledge gets created and gets disseminated to all stakeholders.

About Project
Exercise will develop extensive data of thermo-physical-optical property of building materials, building components and construction assemblies. State of the art material testing facilities will be used to characterize materials. Opaque building materials such as clay bricks, gypsum, stones, cement and RCC will be characterized for its thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, specific heat, density etc. Transparent – translucent materials such as glass, acrylics will be characterized for transmittance, absorptance and reflectance. Subsequent to data base for material, database for construction assemblies such as walls, roofs and components such as windows, skylights and doors will be developed. Online web tool will be developed to facilitate the use of acquired knowledge. This study is an effort initiated by Centre of Excellence in Solar Passive Architecture and Green Building Technology, Centre for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE) at CEPT University and is supported by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Govt. of India. CARBSE is also partnering with local Indian academic and research institutes to accomplish this exercise.

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RACHNA for Officers- Brochure

RACHNA for Practitioners- Brochure

Training programs announced! For application and more details, click here.

Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE) with support from Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), Ministry of Power Govt of India conducted three day refresher course for the master trainers recognised by BEE for Energy Conservation Building Code. The group of master trainings are responsible for training more trainers in various states to aid the implementation and enforcement of Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) and Eco Niwas Samhita (ENS). During the three days if training topics such as Building Envelop systems, HVAC systems, Building Performance Simulation, and case studies of ECBC Compliance were covered. Approximately 60 master trainers participated this training. +

International Finance Corporation (IFC) and CARBSE conducted two Teachers Training (ToT) Program to train the educators from architecture and engineering higher education institutes. The teachers trained during this program are expected to impart education to the students in their universities to promote awareness and understanding of green buildings IFC has developed a green building course of approximately 20 hours duration, aimed at university students of architecture and engineering and professionals related to sustainable construction. This course consists of a range of digital materials in the form of power point slides, case studies, assignments, and teacher’s notes. Designated senior members of the CARBSE worked with IFC resource persons to localize the IFC content to suite Indian context. CARBSE and IFC selected 12 faculty members from six institutes for two ToTs offered during May 2021. +

December 15-22, 2019
The Indo-Swiss Building Energy Efficiency Camp (BEEP Camp) is an intensive and immersive experience, designed to enable learning in the domain of building energy efficiency and the integrated design process.

8 days. 50 participants. Faculty consisting of technical experts and soft skill trainers from India and Switzerland

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Urban planning plays an important role in the energy consumption at city level, and a data-driven urban design is important for the design and implementation of low carbon cities. A novel analytical setup including high performance computing and state of the art UAV has been setup to model different urban scenarios.

• Urban data acquisition equipment

The Equipment consists of an robust hexa-copter with RTK capabilities for high precision position data, which is used with an 5-angle oblique camera which captures detailed aerial images

• Service 1: Creating 3D city Model

The aerial images are processed to develop a accurate geometrical 3D city model which contains various data layers to help in the analysis of built environment.

• Service 2: Urban building energy modelling

Amongst the various analysis carried out, the Urban building energy modelling is used to understand the energy consumption of the city and obtain useful insights for different city stakeholders.

• Service 3: Urban micro climate modelling

The urban microclimate modelling is used to understand the effects of extreme weather on the occupant’s thermal comfort