Evaluation of Energy-Cost-Efficient Design Alternatives for Residential Buildings in Karnataka’s Tropical Wet and Dry Climatic Zones

Introduction: The existing building construction techniques in India account for increased operating energy consumption. Due to this, there is a need to apply sustainable construction methods by including passive design techniques. In accordance with the local climatic condition, a good passive design not only maintains a comfortable environment in the house, but also consumes less energy all the while performing the same basic functions as the traditional structures. Purpose of the study: The present research focuses on residential villas by analyzing parameters such as illuminance, energy, and cost consumption using Revit (Insight 360) software with two different cases. Methods: Considering Case1 as an existing villa of conventional design and Case2 presenting a proposed villa, a remodeling of the existing villa with an increased window wall ratio (WWR), different fenestration designs, and a new building plan. The authors followed the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) guidelines relating to illuminance and generated an analytical energy model using Insight 360 to compare the energy consumption and cost efficiency of the cases. Results: The effectiveness of various fenestration types related to direct heat gain, window orientation that would provide more natural light, total operating energy consumption and costs of two different cases of villas are investigated in this paper.