Our Office is Future Ready

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Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy has moved from our old office space in New Delhi at Saira Towers in Yusuf Sarai to our country office space at 37 Link Road, Lajpat Nagar III, ground floor. Our future ready office, powers our rapidly growing teams and sustained efforts to build a culture of energy efficiency in India. We are walking the talk here!

In a little over 3000sqft we have designed a workspace that both saves energy and money while enhancing performance and comfort, with the right kind of innovative technology to reduce the long-term real costs! Not boasting, but this could be your adoption case study for commercial, high performance workspaces. And you must have heard us say this before, that energy efficiency is the cheapest, fastest and cleanest resource, and the best way to speed, energy transition.

Come visit our office, where we have achieved an overall energy saving of 25% over the ASHRAE 90.1 (2010) baseline. The predicted energy performance index of our workspace is 85 kWh/m2 per year, which will annually save 49% more energy, compared to a conventional office. The additional cost increment in this office is only 6-8%, which can be recovered over the next 18-24 months.

Want to learn how we did it? Here are 8 Pro Tips to make your Office Energy Efficient:

External Glazing is beyond visual comfort: Conventional offices would use a single-pane glass of 5 mm thickness for their windows. This is unsuccessful in limiting the penetration of solar heat gain inside the office. Embrace double-glazing for your large office windows to reduce cooling load and maximize daylight. At AEEE we used double-glazing of 27 mm thickness, filled with argon gas to increase the energy efficiency and general performance of our windows (6 mm Glass – 15 mm Argon – 6 mm Glass).

Maximize Thermal Comfort: Staying cool in Indian offices through summer without overworking the air-conditioner is possible! Onboard the principle of Adaptive Thermal Comfort, like we did for our office where the air-conditioning system is designed to operate in conjunction with ceiling fans. The system is designed to provide optimised cooling even when set between 24°C and 26°C consistent with Government of India (BEE star-rating) guidelines, we save 6% of electricity at no compromise. If you are in India, each tonne of your AC is cooling 150 or 200 sq. ft. be like us and optimize it to 250-300 sq. ft by improving your envelope efficiency. Our office is installed with variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) system which is one of the most energy efficient air-conditioning systems for small offices.

Ceiling fans for reduced electricity bills: A conventional workspace will generally opt for a BEE-star rated ceiling fan (3-5-star rating) which has power rating of 50-55 Watt. Why not install super-efficient ceiling fans like us, that operate on brushless DC motor (BLDC) and have a peak power rating of 28 Watts only. That’s a 44% reduction in power consumption in one shot!

Ventilate to breathe easy: A conventional workspace reliant on open doors, windows to let outdoor air in for filtration, and dilution of indoor air pollutants. If you want to be future-ready, a dedicated ventilation system specifically designed and integrated with the VRF to maintain healthy, pollutant free indoor air quality and comfort, especially in Delhi is a necessity. We have achieved 30% increased fresh air indoors over, ASHRAE standard and our particulate matter and indoor CO₂ levels are within acceptable standards.

Electrical distribution to make energy visible: A conventional office has a mixed electrical circuitry (connecting diverse loads to one circuit), which does not provide the flexibility to perform system/component level analysis therefore putting the brakes on stocktaking for various tasks. However, at AEEE office the electrical circuitry is separate for each system and makes energy usage visible enabling smart tracking.

Smart Metering is real time governance: A conventional office would only have a utility meter, but AEEE’s office equipped with smart metering solution (i.e. PowerTag and SmartLinks from Schneider Electric) that provides real-time energy consumption data and maintains a historical log. Our engineers read the log and tell us where we can do better.

Energy Saving Toolkit: To save energy, data-driven and evidence-based decision-making, is a bare necessity! Evolve a strong central real-time Building Management System (BMS) that monitors and controls the entire energy system of your office from a single location and effectively builds a culture of tangible resource consciousness. This is your energy saving toolkit. So, whether your office is big or small install the BMS to perform system/equipment level analytics, visualisation and notifications at the click of a button. At our office we know the air-quality, comfort and energy usage at all times.

Energy performance index (EPI): The EPI of a conventional air-conditioned office is 165 kWh/m 2 /year (as per BEE rating), however the predicted EPI for AEEE office is 85 kWh/m2/year, which is 49% more efficient compared with a conventional office.

This blog is written by Principal Research Associate, Deepak Tewari and Manager, Strategic Communications, Ipshita Banerjee