energy efficiency

MR. GURUPRAKASH SASTRY

REGIONAL MANAGER –
INFRASTRUCTURE, INFOSYS

Infosys: Front-runner in energy efficiency- A Case Study

Focused efforts on smart buildings systems, retrofits, new building designs with an efficient
envelope, and renewable energy, have significantly reduced Infosys’s per capita energy
consumption in the last seven years. The high performance buildings built by Infosys have
demonstrated that with today’s technology we can design buildings which will consume one
third of the energy of normal buildings at no extra capital costs. Over the last seven years, the
company has been able to avoid consumption of over 880 million units of electricity, reducing
their per capita energy consumption by 46 percent as compared to the 2008 levels.

E
nergy is a precious resource, play-
ing a pivotal role in shaping our
country’s social and economic de-
velopment. Energy access, energy secu-
rity, and climate change pose enormous
challenge to India’s goal of achieving in-
clusive economic growth. There is a huge
dependency on fossil fuels to meet the en-
ergy needs. India is dependent on crude
oil imports, about $125 billion annually, to
meet its energy demands, even as 300 mil-
lion of the population is without electricity.
In the face of rising energy demands and
limited energy supply, the role of energy
efficiency in bridging the energy gap can-
not be undermined.
Energy efficiency improvements have the
potential to accelerate economic growth
and benefit the society at large. It yields
benefits across different levels of an econ-
omy including, increased energy security,
carbon emission mitigation, reduced ener-
gy related expenditure, poverty alleviation,
improved health and well-being, industrial
productivity, and so on.
TABLE 1
Performance metric
Energy Performance Index
Lighting design
Air-conditioning design (Reduction in heat load)
Total building electrical design
TABLE 2
System Description Units
Total electrical load MW
Transformer capacity MVA
DG set capacity MVA
Annual energy consumption Million kWh
Building sector accounts for over 30%
of the total energy consumed in India. We
have estimated that, out of this, more than
40% of energy use is taken up by heating
and cooling systems. As corporates need
continuous power supply to run their busi-
ness operations, intervening in these areas
draws attractive reductions in energy use
and costs. In the recent past, energy effi-
ciency is gaining momentum among many
corporates. Push towards renewable ener-
gy, energy efficient lighting, cooling, and
heating system, etc. is being witnessed in
India. Infosys is leading from the front in
this area. It has made its buildings and op-
erations the most efficient ones and is still
continuing to do more with less.
Focused efforts on smart buildings sys-
tems, retrofits, new building designs with
an efficient envelope, and renewable en-
ergy, have significantly reduced Infosys’s
per capita energy consumption in the last
seven years. The high performance build-
ings built by Infosys have demonstrated
that with today’s technology we can de-
Infosys new design
75 kWh/m2/year
0.48 W/sq.ft
750 sqft per TR
3.5 W/sq.ft
Infosys new designs Conventional designs
3.5 10.0
4.0 12.0
5+2.5 15+3
7.5 25
sign buildings which will consume one
third of the energy of normal buildings at
no extra capital costs. Over the last seven
years, the company has been able to avoid
consumption of over 880 million units of
electricity, reducing their per capita energy
consumption by 46 percent as compared
to the 2008 levels.
All Infosys buildings are designed to
achieve the new performance benchmarks
(see table 1). Infrastructure required for 1
million sq.ft is in table 2.
Infosys has achieved significant energy
savings by
1. Developing super-efficient new
buildings,
2. Retrofitting existing buildings,
3. Pushing boundaries and innovating,
and
4. Continuous monitoring to achieve
highest levels of efficiency.
Super-efficient building designs
Many buildings have over-designed sys-
tems due to use of thumb-rule calculation
methodology, change of usage pattern,
etc. leading to inefficient operations. In-
fosys has recognized that intervening in
these areas can help fetch great results.
Thus, Infosys focuses on bringing efficien-
cy right from the design stage to elimi-
nate inefficiencies. Infosys buildings are
designed with a super-efficient envelope
having appropriate north-south orienta-
tion, insulated walls and roof, optimized
window-wall ratio of less than 30%, nar-
row floor plate, and high performance
glazing with adequate shading. Window

4 energética india · JAN | FEB16

 energy efficiency

Figure 1: Façade of Infosys SDB-1 building, Hyderabad.

design includes daylight pane, vision • Primary secondary systems in chiller These interventions have freed up almost
pane, light shelves, and other shading plants replaced with variable primary a third of the space that was previously oc-
devices which let in a good amount of inline pumps, resulting into about cupied in the plant room. Deep green ret-
natural light, removing the requirement 30% reduction in energy and about rofits in the air conditioning systems have
to switch on lights during the day. These 45% reduction in equipment helped achieve 15 MW connected load
interventions enable maximum daylight • In the air handling units, conventional reduction in the last four years. These ret-
penetration into the building with no fan system replaced with EC (Electroni- rofits have a short payback period of less
glare, providing a natural and healthy cally Commutated) fans leading to than three years with the life of equipment
work environment to the employees. nearly 50% reduction in energy being more than ten years, thus making
Today, the company has 14 buildings • Variable speed drives installed in each them financially viable for implementation.
with LEED Platinum and 4 buildings with and every equipment
GRIHA 5-star rating. This covers a total of • Chiller plants are designed with series UPS retrofit:
about 5.25 million sq.ft. of built up area counter flow arrangement for opti- In addition, conventional UPS systems
with highest level of green certification. mum energy use have been replaced with energy efficient
We have also achieved an Energy Perfor- • Reduction in the number of chiller modular UPS systems to reduce installed
mance Index (EPI) of 75 kWh/ sq.m. / Year, plants from 54 to 41. capacity and energy consumption. Modu-
among the lowest in the industry. • Older air-cooled Variable Refriger- lar UPS systems offer highest level of effi-
ant Volume (VRV) units replaced with ciency and flexibility through a unique sys-
Deep green retrofits chilled-water-based units which are tem design with cutting-edge architecture,
While making the new buildings super- free from harmful refrigerants and re- consisting of independent hot swappable
efficient, Infosys realized the great po- quire lower maintenance as compared modules- about 5 to 10 in number. These
tential in the existing buildings. Thus, to the previous system modules allow online interchangeability
to make old buildings as efficient as the
TABLE 3
new ones, they undertook massive HVAC,
Description Old System New System Impact
lighting, and UPS system retrofits. These
Elimination of 120 UPS
deep green retrofits have significantly re- Number of UPS systems 350 230
systems
duced the connected load in four years. UPS Capacity 30200 KVA 20000 KVA 34% reduction
The short payback period of these pro- Efficiency 79% 93% 18% improvement
jects clearly demonstrates the viability of Number of batteries 19500 10000 49% reduction
TABLE 4
retrofits in improving efficiency by huge
Particulars Conventional UPS Modular UPS
numbers.
Design Load–80 KVA 80 KVA x 2 20 KVA x 5
Total installed KVA 160 KVA 100 KVA
Chiller Plant Room retrofit: Operating daytime load -70 KVA 70 KVA 70 KVA
• Complete re-engineering of chiller Actual load on each UPS 44% 70%
plants minimized piping, eliminated Day time efficiency of UPS 84% 93%
use of balancing valves, thereby reduc- Operating night time load–35 KVA 35 KVA 35 KVA
ing pressure drop and right sizing the Actual load on each UPS 22% 35%

pumps Night time efficiency of UPS 73% 92%

energetica india · JAN | FEB16 5

energy efficiency
Figure 2: Roof painted white to minimize heat ingress into the building.
of UPS systems. Each module within the
UPS system has a rectifier, inverter, static
bypass, and a processor, thereby ensuring
continuous power supply even if one mod-
ule of the entire system fails.
The table 3 shows the number, installed
capacity, and efficiency of the systems
both before and after retrofit, across Info-
sys campuses in India.
In table 4 there is an example of UPS
configuration comparison between con-
ventional and modular UPS systems.
The average efficiency of the UPS system
has improved by 18 per cent, thereby re-
ducing energy use and energy costs to a
great extent. UPS retrofit has helped Info-
sys achieve about 10 MW connected load
reduction in the last four years. UPS retro-
fit has a short payback period of less than
three years, making it financially viable for
others to emulate.
White roofs:
Additionally, Infosys roofs have been paint-
ed with High-albedo white paints (SRI val-
ue greater than 75 percent) to reduce heat
gain and minimize air conditioning loads.
According to Infosys, this minimizes solar
heat gain by reducing the roof’s surface
temperature by up to 10degC. Infosys has
also taken up lighting system retrofit to
optimize its lighting energy consumption.
Conventional lighting fixtures have been
replaced with efficient LED light fixtures
and with essential controls such as occu-
pancy and daylight sensors. This has led to
6 energetica
a reduction of over 60% in the total light-
ing energy consumption.
Innovative technologies:
In addition to undertaking new energy ef-
ficient buildings and deep retrofit projects
in existing buildings, Infosys has made its
buildings live labs to test and adopt new
innovative technologies.
Radiant slab based cooling: Infosys SDB
1 building in Hyderabad is the first radiant
cooled commercial building in India and
the biggest comparison of cooling systems
in the world. The building is a live lab split
into two symmetric halves, one half with
conventional air conditioning and the oth-
er with radiant cooling. Data over the last
five years show that radiant cooling tech-
nology is 30% more efficient than conven-
tional cooling.
Radiant panel based cooling: Infosys
is the first in India to implement the radi-
ant panel-based cooling system. Pipes are
embedded in panels of modular sizes like
ceiling tiles, and are then interconnected
to allow water flow. Cooling is achieved
when the occupants, computers, lighting
and equipment radiate directly to the cold
ceiling. Fresh air is supplied through an
air system that maintains pleasant indoor
air quality. The company believes that this
system is the solution for cases with spe-
cific ceiling designs and retrofits in existing
buildings to achieve considerable energy
reduction. But, at the same time the avail-
able radiant cooling solution may not be
cost effective in India and be a major con-
straint for adoption.
Radiflux radiant cooling solution: To
overcome the limitations of these radiant
cooling systems, Infosys has developed
Radiflux radiant cooling solution in- house.
Radiflux is a high efficiency, high quality,
reliable, affordable and quick to install
cooling solution. It delivers about two
times more capacity for the same coverage
area, than other radiant panel solutions
available in the market today. Radiflux is
designed, developed and made in India so-
lution for the world, with patents pending
in US, Europe and India.
Continuous monitoring:
Infosys strongly believe that data talks.
Thus, the company is also monitoring and
measuring efficiency improvements in
real-time, through their central command
centre in Bangalore. The central command
center is managing the smart buildings,
energy management systems, solar PV
systems, data center power usage effec-
tiveness, battery management systems,
energy consumption for sewage treatment
plants, and weather stations for their per-
formance across Infosys campuses from
one single place. Operations data flow-
ing into the command center from various
systems across campuses is used to review
and optimize operations, drive resource
conservation, perform fault detection and
diagnostics, and ensure high level of com-
fort and indoor air quality to our building
occupants. The data helps in evaluating
and validating our current design, and also
improving design for future buildings and
systems.
Infosys is constantly pushing bounda-
ries and setting new benchmarks for the
industry to achieve highest level of effi-
ciency. Infosys has made an unassailable
business case for large companies to im-
plement energy efficiency initiatives. The
company has demonstrated that these ini-
tiatives have an attractive payback period
for other corporates and wider communi-
ties to emulate. All the data- backed ener-
gy efficiency initiatives are easily replicable
in large- scale across the globe in a cost
effective manner. Infosys wants to lead a
systemic change and build a low carbon
future for the benefit of the society and
environment 
india · JAN | FEB16