If everything goes according to its plan, Andhra Pradesh will have the world’s largest stock of net energy neutral public buildings at a single place in the emerging capital city of Amaravati with the technical support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
A comprehensive design guidelines document is being prepared by the experts implementing the SDC’s Indo-Swiss Building Energy Efficiency Project (BEEP) in select locations in India. It is expected to be published by mid-2017.
The idea is to make all public buildings in the Amaravati Government Complex energy neutral and see which one of them can set a benchmark as a net energy positive structure in the later stages.
This concept of energy-efficient buildings is to be applied all over Amaravati in due course, for which the A.P. government has enlisted the support of SDC.
As far as the A.P. government’s project is concerned, a beginning has already been made with the gathering of typical design details and specifications of the proposed public buildings, by the BEEP team.
Sameer Maithel, Head of BEEP PMTU (Project Management and Technical Unit) India, has said he is in touch with the departments of the Government of A.P. involved in the construction of public buildings.
“Information being collected from it [A.P. government] will be analysed and then suggestions made on making the designs energy-efficient and thermally comfortable. These things are likely to be finalised by the middle of next year,” Mr. Maithel has stated.
Follow-up meetings
The BEEP team had follow-up meetings with the Andhra Pradesh government departments earlier this month and it is waiting for further details of the designs. It will then propose design changes that will cause a reduction in the energy consumption of new buildings.
What follows is the feasibility of taking a whole gamut of measures that will make buildings ‘net energy positive’ which means the renewable energy generated will be more than the total energy consumed by them.
The benefits of energy neutral buildings far outweigh the higher costs of construction as is evident from the success of such projects around the world, according to experts.
