Financial Viability of Energy Conservation Using Natural Light in an Institutional Building in India

Abstract

This chapter presents the results of energy conservation in an institutional building using daylighting instead of artificial lighting to achieve the desired luminous flux. The most effective tool to easily understand the financial viability in the situation is the Benefit-to-cost ratio. The chapter examines the optimum techniques that should be adopted to increase the amount of daylight entering a building while also considering the financial effect of adopting these techniques and, finally, the impact on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. It explores building orientation, visual light transmittance of glazing, window-to-wall ratio, and the combination of the factors. J. N. Turner et al. presented a new methodology for characterizing the energy performance of buildings suitable for city-scale, top-down energy modeling. All energy-efficient buildings in India provide lighting power density as per Energy Conservation Building Code guidelines. Apart from energy savings and lighting load reduction, the most important impact of using natural light is the reduction of CO2 emissions in the environment.