Energy Audit of IIT Kharagpur  

A I E S E C   I I T   K h a r a g p u r

I I T   K h a r a g p u r

J a n u a r y   –   A p r i l ,   2 0 1 0

AIESEC IIT Kharagpur The first ever Energy Audit of the whole campus of the 

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, conducted by 

AIESEC IIT Kharagpur in association with Electrical 

Engineering Department and Ecozen Solutions. 

 

 

 

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What is an Energy Audit? An energy audit is a preliminary activity towards instituting energy efficiency programs in an establishment. It consists of activities that seek to identify conservation opportunities preliminary. The term energy audit is commonly used to describe a broad spectrum of energy studies ranging from a quick walk-through of a facility to identify major problem areas to a comprehensive analysis of the implications of alternative energy efficiency measures sufficient to satisfy the financial criteria of sophisticated investors.

Three common audit programs are described in more detail below, although the actual tasks performed and level of effort may vary with the consultant providing services under these broad headings.

Preliminary Audit The preliminary audit alternatively called a simple audit, screening audit or walk-through audit, is the simplest and quickest type of audit. It involves minimal interviews with site operating personnel, a brief review of facility utility bills and other operating data, and a walk-through of the facility to become familiar with the building operation and identify glaring areas of energy waste or inefficiency.

General Audit The general audit alternatively called a mini-audit; site energy audit or complete site energy audit expands on the preliminary audit described above by collecting more detailed information about facility operation and performing a more detailed evaluation of energy conservation measures identified.

Investment-Grade Audit In most corporate settings, upgrades to a facility's energy infrastructure must compete with non-energy related investments for capital funding. Both energy and non-energy investments are rated on a single set of financial criteria that generally stress the expected return on investment (ROI). The projected operating savings from the implementation of energy projects must be developed such that they provide a high level of confidence.

 

 

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Energy Audit of IIT Kharagpur There is tremendous scope for conducting an audit on a campus the size of IIT Kharagpur, sprawled over 2000 acres with its academic and residential areas.

If implemented in IIT Kharagpur, such an audit will have many benefits:

Reduction in the annual energy bill of the institute. A learning experience for students conducting the energy audit. Awareness rose in and around the campus regarding the importance of judicious

usage of energy. Being one of the premier institutes of technology in the country, IIT Kharagpur

would be an excellent example to set for others to follow.

The Planning Process

The planning for the Energy Audit project started way back in early 2009. After gathering the necessary information and fundamentals from various sources, the process of drawing out a project plan started in October 2009. In December of the same year, AIESEC IIT Kharagpur associated with Ecozen solutions, an upcoming start-up at IIT Kharagpur working in the fields of energy and environment solutions. The job role of Ecozen solutions was to provide AIESEC IIT Kharagpur scientific advisory during the course of Energy Audit. We then requested two faculty members of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Prof. N. K. Kishore and Dr. Prabodh Bajpai to share with us their invaluable advice and experience in the technical aspects of energy auditing. The two professors willingly came onto the board of technical advisors of the project. Over the course of time, the model of the Energy Audit was changed to an intensive project involving two foreign interns and a group of students from IIT Kharagpur who would be working on a “Preliminary Study of Energy Audit of specific parts of the IIT Kharagpur campus”. Based on the advice from the technical board, the project was re-designed as a low cost, high speed student intensive project which aims to provide the necessary data which is required for future perusal of any related implementations or associated projects in the campus. Eventually two interns were recruited for the need of the project, Felipe Andres Veliz Cornejo from Chile and Sandra Chavez from Mexico. Furthermore, we have associated with IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers) and IYCN (The Indian Youth Climate Network) to get the project approved by the reputed organizations.

The two stage recruitment process for the students from the campus started on Jan 7 after a huge round of promotion in the campus. There was an introductory briefing given by the Ecozen solutions, describing the Audit in short, explaining the technicalities of the process and the various job roles involved. The interested students were asked to register themselves beforehand and the seminar saw a gathered audience of over 150. The briefing was followed by an online examination, a couple of hours later, to test the interested students on the technical and analytical grounds. The online examination lasted for an hour and the portal was designed to shut down itself after the deadline to ensure minimization of unfair means. Based upon the performance in the interviews, 60 students were selected to proceed for the next round of selection. The merited students were allowed to sit for the personal one – to – one interview with the technical board, consisting

 

 

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of a professor and a representative from Ecozen Solutions. The candidates were judged by their fundamental knowledge, analytical skills and dedication towards the project. The final and binding decision was taken by the professors and hence, 40 students were selected for the Energy Audit project.

Finally, the work on the Audit started in mid-January with the team hierarchy being as follows:

At first, there’s a Supervisory Board followed by the Data Integration and Analysis Team. The Data Integration and Analysis team is superseded by the ground teams. The following tree diagram would be giving a better picture.

The Supervisory Board consisted of the two faculty members from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Prof. N. K. Kishore and Dr. Prabodh Bajpai who used to mentor the teams on the technical aspects of the audit. The Audit primarily served as a learning experience for the students involved in the same. The Data Integration and Analysis Team consisted of the team at Ecozen solutions who helped to analyse the data collected by the Ground Teams and derive the conclusions from them. The Ground Teams consisted of the students selected after the tedious three stage selection process. There was a team leader for each team who had comparatively more knowledge than the others in the team.

The whole group of students involved in the Energy Audit project was primarily divided into three different teams based on the technical areas of research:

1. Electrical Team 2. Fossil Fuels Team 3. Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Team

To display an example of team structure, the Electrical team is described below:

The whole electrical team consisted of 20 students. 16 students were divided into 4 groups under the guidance of 4 M.Tech students for the data collection process. There is a total of 33 departments and centres and 19 halls of residence in the IIT Kharagpur campus. Each group was given a certain number of those departments and halls for the data collection. The methodology of the process of Energy Auditing is as described below:

 

 

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Methodology

As shown above the project kicked off with the surveying of the campus and collecting the necessary data for further observations. This was analysed by the Data integration and Supervision team who concluded with the derived results. The Instruments required were identified at every step in the process and were supplied to the teams by AIESEC IIT Kharagpur through various departments of IIT Kharagpur. The results were then compiled and presented to the institute.

The Data Collection procedure is explained by taking the Electrical Team as an example:

In Hostels:

Each room in a hall is mostly of the same size. The number of appliances in each room is almost the same. For example, a standard room has a desktop or a laptop, a ceiling fan, and a tube light. So, the total number of rooms in a particular hall was calculated and multiplied with the standard count. Regarding the corridors, the number of tube lights in each of them was counted and so was done for the common bathrooms. Many bathrooms also have a washing machine and a geyser. The same was accounted for. Apart from them, there are a few miscellaneous establishments such as a canteen, a Nescafe centre, a Xerox shop and a store in each hall. The electric appliances used there were on the likes of a microwave, a Xerox machine, scanner, printer, desktop and a refrigerator. Each one of them was taken into count. In the mess, the ratings of the ovens, refrigerators, grinding machine, table fans and other appliances used were noted. Other appliances include Air Conditioner in the warden’s room, television sets in common rooms, server at the server room etc.

In Departments: In each department, the number of appliances in each professor’s rooms was counted at first and then it was observed that almost each one of them has an air conditioner, a desktop, a printer, a scanner, telephones and a table fan. So, this was taken as the standard and multiplied it with the number of professors’ rooms in the department. Appliances in the Head of the Departments’ room were noted down by personal visits. Each and every laboratory of each department was scrutinised by personal visits and the ratings of the instruments present there were noted down. The lab representatives of

 

 

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each lab were personally approached so as to know the time of operation of the instruments on a daily basis so as to calculate the utilization factor for each device.

The Data Analysis portion of the audit is explained taking the Electrical Team as an example:

All the pre-requisite data from the various groups in each team was gathered and combined for analysis. The total number of appliances in the departments, their utilization factor (fraction of the total day the instrument is being used) and the total power consumption of the department was calculated by adding the power consumption of the individual devices. The analysis was further divided into five categories: Ventilation, Lighting, Air Conditioning, Computers and Others. The data in these five categories was plotted onto a pie chart so as to find the Per-Service Wise Consumption. Then the data of different departments was projected onto another pie diagram so as to find the Per-Area Wise Consumption.

From this data we found out the total electrical consumption of all the departments and halls of residence.

 

 

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Workshops

Several workshops were conducted by the Ecozen solutions to induct the newly recruited students into the Energy Auditing process and to inculcate a scientific temper in them. They include:

Introduction and Data handling Data Validation and Analysis Use of Instruments Efficiency Improvement Results Compilation Carbon Trading

 

 

 

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The Final Presentation

The final presentation of the Energy Audit project was given on the 17th of April, 2010. The presentation was attended by the students of IIT Kharagpur; AIESECers; various professors of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering from the institute; the Dean, Students’ Affairs; the Dean, Alumni Affairs and International Relations; the Chair, IEEE and the Director of IIT Kharagpur. The final presentation was a grand finale to the four month long, intensive project. During the presentation, the head of each team presented the synopsis of the particular aspect of the audit. Then, the suggestions which we suggest to reduce the consumption of energies in the institute were presented. Each of the suggestion was classified into two categories, Behavioural changes and Infrastructural changes. The payback period for each of the suggestion was calculated and displayed during the presentation. (Exhaustive description of the suggestions and the technical synopsis of the project can be found at http://aieseciitkgp.org/home/events/go-green/energy-audit) The Director then congratulated the team for putting in such a huge effort and performing a non-credit Energy Audit process for the first time since the inception of the Indian Institutes of Technology. He also promised to try ensuring that all the suggestions that have been offered during the due course of the audit will be implemented in the campus and turn IIT Kharagpur into an idealistic inspiration for all. He then, presented the whole team with institute mementoes as a token of appreciation. Sachin Jaiswal, President, AIESEC IIT Kharagpur delivered a vote of thanks on behalf of the organization. The students were awarded with certificates based on their performance in the audit (Participation, Merit and Excellence) from the Director and the Dean, Students’ Affairs. The presentation then ended with a luncheon involving all the members of the Energy Audit team, the Deans and the Professors, a grand finale to the first intensive project of AIESEC IIT Kharagpur.

 

 

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Some snippets from the Final Presentation

   

   

 

 

 

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Incentives:

Given the tedious nature of the project, the students from IIT Kharagpur were promised certain incentives as a token of appreciation for the dedication they have shown in the Energy Audit. These incentives were the responsibility of AIESEC IIT Kharagpur and we are proud to have fulfilled them and delivered the best of opportunities to the students. They include:

1. Certificates of appreciation endorsed by IEEE, ASHRAE and IIT Kharagpur.

2. Institutional mementoes

3. Internship Opportunities at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)

4. Internship Opportunities at SIEMENS Mumbai.

Finances

The cost of running the project was borne by AIESEC IIT Kharagpur which included

the stipend to be paid to the two interns and several other running expenses.

SRIC (Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy), IIT Kharagpur has provided

AIESEC IIT Kharagpur with funding for fabrication of instruments

AIESEC IIT Kharagpur has received grant from the Office of Alumni Affairs and

International Relations.

IEEE has also promised us a grant for such a novel effort.

 

 

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Vote of Thanks

I, on behalf of AIESEC IIT Kharagpur would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Souvik Bhattacharyya (Dean, Students’ Affairs and Advisor, AIESEC IIT Kharagpur) for all the indispensable support he has provided us from time to time during the entire course of the project. In spite of constantly bothering him with all the difficulties we faced during the four month duration, he always lent out a helping hand. If not exaggerating, he stood like a pillar to the organization during all the hardships we faced. Sir, we owe you one. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Prof. N. K. Kishore and Dr. Prabodh Bajpai (Dept. of Electrical Engg., IIT Kharagpur) for all the technical support they provided us and helping us in obtaining the instruments without which, this project would still be a dream. I will be in debt to Dr. Ash Pachauri (Advisor, AIESEC IIT Khargpur) for helping me out in obtaining internship opportunities at TERI for the deserving students and helping us in getting the project endorsed by TERI. I would also like to express my thanks to Mr. Bharat Tanna (Advisor, AIESEC IIT Kharagpur) for helping us out in obtaining internship opportunities at SIEMENS Mumbai. Also, the organization would be extremely grateful to the Ecozen Solutions (Mr. Devendra Gupta, Mr. Sumeet Gattewar, Mr. Prateek Singhal and Mr. Shailesh Gupta) for being the wonderful organization they have been and giving us a helping hand in all the technical details of the audit. I would also take this opportunity to thank Prof. M. Ramgopal (Dept. of Mechanical Engg., IIT Kharagpur) for providing us invaluable advice and sharing his technical expertise during the HVAC audit. I would express my gratitude to the two interns, Mr. Felipe Veliz and Ms. Sandra Chavez, who came from across the world and played a pivotal role in the success of the audit. I would also thank Mr. Aproop Dheeraj and Mr. Akhil Naru, for the whole of the idea of Energy Audit was their brainchild. Last but not the least, no success is possible without a team. I would take this opportunity to thank the whole of my Executive Body and the Member Body of AIESEC IIT Kharagpur without whose support this project would have surely stopped midway. Also, I would remain indebted to all those people whose support drove this project to completion and whose names have not been mentioned here.

Thanking You,

Srinandan Kundula Vice President (External Relations) AIESEC IIT Kharagpur

 

 

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Local Board of Advisors

Mr. Bharat Tanna Vice President

Mr. Arvind Krishnan Sr. Executive

Mr. Rahul Reddy Director

Mr. Ash Pachauri Director & CEO

Mr. Saurav Garg Director

Mr. Raja Menon Director

Prof. Souvik Bhattacharyya Dean, Student Affairs, IIT

Kharagpur

Mr. Nagendra Varada Director

Mr. Sandipan Deb Chief Editor