Abstract

Buildings consume 33% of total energy (24% domestic and 9% commercial) in India and this is growing at 8% per annum hence, there is a need for energy efficiency in the building sector. The revised version of Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) was published in June 2017 after ten years. The new version of ECBC goes beyond minimum compliance and has two additional levels of ECBC ‘plus’ and ‘super’ which include prescriptive requirements and alternative performance goals based on energy use intensity. This paper assesses the energy savings and payback period for the prescriptive of ECBC-2017, minimum compliance, plus and super levels for an office building in Vishakhapatnam. It also demonstrates alternative cost optimized solutions for these three levels of ECBC. The office building is a real building in design stage according to the current construction trends that do not comply with previous ECBC version 2007 for all building systems. The availability & cost of equipment and material to reach the ECBC 2017 levels is are assessed with a market survey. Since ECBC 2017 is a new code that has yet to be adopted by local building departments, this study shows the energy benefits for ECBC minimum compliance, ECBC plus and ECBC super levels. Further, this paper also demonstrates how simulations can be used to find more cost-effective approaches to reach ECBC 2017 performance levels using the whole building compliance approach.