Monto Mani

Impacts of modern transitions on thermal comfort in vernacular dwellings in warm-humid climate of Sugganahalli (India)

Sugganahalli, a rural vernacular community in a warm-humid region in South India, is under transition towards adopting modern construction practices. Vernacular local building elements like rubble walls and mud roofs are given way to burnt brick walls and reinforced cement concrete (RCC)/tin roofs. Over 60% of Indian population is rural, and implications of such transitions on thermal comfort and energy in buildings are crucial to understand. Vernacular architecture evolves adopting local resources in response to the local climate adopting passive solar designs. This paper investigates the effectiveness of passive solar elements on the indoor thermal comfort by adopting modern climate-responsive design strategies. Dynamic simulation models validated by measured data have also been adopted to determine the impact of the transition from vernacular to modern material-configurations. Age-old traditional design considerations were found to concur with modern understanding into bio-climatic response and climate-responsiveness. Modern transitions were found to increase the average indoor temperatures in excess of 7℃. Such transformations tend to shift the indoor conditions to a psychrometric zone that is likely to require active air-conditioning. Also, the surveyed thermal sensation votes were found to lie outside the extended thermal comfort boundary for hot developing countries provided by Givoni in the bio-climatic chart.

Discerning Rejection of Technology

Technology is innate to modern society and primarily embodies human intellect. It greatly influences development, societal functioning, and sociotechnical transitions. Rapid technological advancements, made possible with advancement in science, human ingenuity, and competitive markets, provide human society with affordable and unlimited choice. A society can be viewed, with an individual as the fundamental unit, or as a community, or state/nation. In one view, sustainability can be viewed through a matrix of societal, economic, and environmental configurations associated with the three societal levels. Technological advancement and complexity can either remain simple and amenable to the user or, as emerging in recent years, may daunt the user to keep away. While the phenomenon of technology adoption (acceptance) in society has been well appreciated, the increasingly characteristic phenomenon of technology rejection is yet to be understood and studied. Technology rejection is not merely a negation of its acceptance, and hence requires to be discerned carefully. Rejection also does not imply in its totality, but varies in terms of its kind and/or intensiveness. While rejection is discernable at all these three levels of society, this study remains focused at the level of the user (individual). It attempts to discern rejection of technology and discusses its distinctness from technology acceptance through an exhaustive literature study. The article initially discusses the technology–society nexus and provides a preliminary technology–user interface model leading to a detailed discussion into the determinants of technology rejection.

Evaluating thermal comfort and building climatic response in warm-humid climates for vernacular dwellings in Suggenhalli (India)

Vernacular dwellings are well-suited passive climate-responsive designs based on local materials and skills to support comfortable indoor environments. These naturally ventilated (NV) dwellings have supported and sustained civilizations even in extreme climates. The design and physiological resilience of the inhabitants have coevolved to be attuned to prevalent climatic and environmental conditions. Such adaptations have perplexed modern theories in human thermal comfort that have evolved in the era of air-conditioned buildings. The paper investigates climatic response and thermal comfort in NV vernacular dwellings in Suggenahalli, a village near Bangalore (India), set in a warm-humid climate. The study includes real-time thermal performance monitoring of a typical courtyard dwelling and includes a thermal sensation survey comprising a fifth of the village inhabitants. Two popular models have been evaluated, namely Fangers predicted mean vote (PMV) and Humphreys adaptive thermal comfort. Ascertaining the PMV requires repeated inquiry and measurements which was unappealing to the rural community, with the responses turning out to be casual and indifferent. A methodology, termed aggregated PMV, was thus evolved and tested to ascertain the thermal responses. Furthermore, conventional PMV assessments overestimated the thermal responses for winter despite application of the expectancy factor. Humphreys neutral comfort assessments also were in parallax with observed neutral temperatures.

Design of a Climate-Responsive BIPV Research Facility in Bangalore

This paper describes the design and erection of a climate-responsive Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) structure in Bangalore, (12.58 N, 77.38 E) in the state of Karnataka, India. Building Integrated Photovoltaics integrate solar panels as part of a building structure (roofs and walls) with an aim to achieve self-sufficiency in the operation and occupant-comfort energy requirements. A joint collaboration between the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is setting up a 70,000 US

BIPV: a real-time building performance study for a roof-integrated facility

facility for research in BIPV structures. The structure utilizes low energy building materials like Stabilized Mud Blocks (SMB) integrated with a PV roof. Numerous challenges were overcome in the design of the BIPV roof including mechanisms for natural thermal comfort in response to Bangalores climatic conditions. The paper presents the challenges overcome in the design and construction of a low energy, climate-responsive BIPV structure.

Performance evaluation for PV systems to synergistic influences of dust, wind and panel temperatures: Spectral insight

ABSTRACT Building integrated photovoltaic system (BIPV) is a photovoltaic (PV) integration that generates energy and serves as a building envelope. A building element (e.g. roof and wall) is based on its functional performance, which could include structure, durability, maintenance, weathering, thermal insulation, acoustics, and so on. The present paper discusses the suitability of PV as a building element in terms of thermal performance based on a case study of a 5.25 kWp roof-integrated BIPV system in tropical regions. Performance of PV has been compared with conventional construction materials and various scenarios have been simulated to understand the impact on occupant comfort levels. In the current case study, PV as a roofing material has been shown to cause significant thermal discomfort to the occupants. The study has been based on real-time data monitoring supported by computer-based building simulation model.

Retraction notice to “A conceptual model of people's approach to sanitation” [Sci Total Environ 390 (2008) 1–12]

Dust is a ubiquitous occurrence influencing PV performance, primarily by cutting the solar radiation reaching the PV cell. Since the PV cell is always encapsulated, the dynamics of light reaching the cell involves a complex interplay of scattering, absorption and reflection of light starting from surface of glass till it reaches the cell. Dust settling on the glass adds to this complex interplay and alters the way both direct and diffused radiation reaches the PV cell. The impact of dust thus far has always been understood to be detrimental, which may not be valid under all conditions. Dust on PV (panel) glass could be studied as optical filters determining which wavelength of light reaches the PV cell. While few studies on dust have dealt with the spectral-band of light necessary for PV output, they have overlooked the fact that the remainder of the spectra is absorbed by the PV system, and could influence its output. It is possible that dust actually absorbs the unwanted IR that would otherwise increase cell temperature, degrading its output. Preliminary study concurs that certain kind of dust deposition at specific settlement densities could be beneficial for PV performance by absorbing unwanted IR. The current study deals with Si based PV which is known to predominantly operate on the visible part of the solar spectrum, and is easily affected by temperature (IR absorption) and dust.

Current State of Domestic Concealed Wiring Practices in Bangalore, India

The authors have plagiarized part of a paper that had already appeared in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Volume 25 (2005), Pages 335–346. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2005.07.003. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

An updated review on factors and their inter-linked influences on photovoltaic system performance

In a modernising world, building and construction trends in recent urban centres such as Bangalore, set precedence for developments in other urban centres of the country. Under such conditions, evaluating the current state of building practices could prove useful for identifying the likely nature of nationwide building trends. This paper comprises a study to evaluate the current state of domestic concealed wiring practices in the context of a modern urban centre area in India. Presently, concealed wiring is the predominant wiring method adopted for residences, both bungalows and apartments. A modern residential block in the city of Bangalore (India) was chosen as the study area. The study included extensive interaction and surveys amongst residents, professionals (architects and engineers) and site personnel (contractors and electricians). In addition, the study also included site verification on the state of wiring practices in the residential block. The study indicates that while aesthetics was the prime reason that dictated the choice of concealed wiring, its effectiveness as an appropriate and safe wiring method is severely compromised. Details of the study, results and recommendations are presented in this paper.

Embodied and operational energy of rural dwellings in India

Globally installed solar photovoltaics (PV) capacity has crossed three hundred gigawatts and is increasing each year. As the share of solar PV in the energy mix of a country increases, forecasting PV power available will be crucial. To forecast the instantaneous and long-term PV power output, understanding the factors influencing them is necessary. In this view, this work elaborates on the factors that impact the PV system through tabulation and graphical explanation. Further, a discussion of the articles related to the dust-induced change in performance is made. To understand the impact of dust on solar PV systems in depth, advanced instrumentation and methodologies have been used in the past few years. One of the methods is the measurement of spectral transmittance/reflectance/absorptance of the dust layer on the PV panel. This has led to the question whether a thin layer of some specific dust can be beneficial by absorbing infrared (IR) heat and hence allowing the PV cells to operate at a lower temperature. Many controlled experiments in the laboratory have been made using the artificial dust and sun simulators; and such studies aid in the development of numerical models. Research in modeling, mathematical analysis (from first principles) of dust deposition, and calculation of its impact on panels have been given importance in recent years. Outdoor experiments are relatively more common than other modes of research in this field. Studies involving the interaction of deposited dust with spectral radiation, improving the correlation between artificial and natural dust deposition, the interplay between dust and atmospheric parameters are to be encouraged.