In February 2020 Paul Ehrlich of Building Intelligence Group was invited to present a paper on “Optimized Building Controls and Grid Integration” at Energise 2020 an energy efficiency conference in Hyderabad India sponsored by ACEEE and their affiliate in India AEEE. See: https://www.energiseindia.in
The conference provided a good opportunity to gain a glimpse into the challenges faced by the second largest (and growing) country in the world. India has four times the number of people as the US, yet uses less than half as much electricity. Their usage of power varies greatly from the US. While we have fairly even usage between residential buildings, commercial buildings and industry, India has over 60% used by industry, 25% by commercial buildings, but only 8% in commercial buildings. The reason for the low usage is that they have relatively few larger, air-conditioned commercial buildings. But that is rapidly changing, and they are anticipating a 200% gain in the number of commercial buildings over the next ten years. They have an aggressive plan to address residential cooling efficiency, and a lot of focus on improving industrial efficiency. One key finding was that in commercial buildings they have challenges with controls, both with their getting omitted due to budget, as well as with operators being able to use them properly.
A key take away from the conference was that while much of our challenge in North America is in retrofitting our existing stock for improved efficiency and flexibility, while in India the opportunity is to build new buildings right for the future.