Mumbai : The ‘Smart Bandra-Kurla Complex’ project that is set to go live by next October will now include an interesting feature to make the business district an energy-efficient complex. The new addition—Building Monitoring System—will have a live web-based dashboard that would flash energy consumption of the commercial buildings of the business district. The inclusion of this component in ‘Smart BKC’ by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority is to create energy saving practices and brand BKC as an energy efficient complex as per international standards.
MMRDA is the special planning authority of the business district and gives all the building control rules and regulations in the complex. “We have this added component, which at this stage may not cost much, but it will be very important, it’s what we are calling building monitoring system. BMS is whereby you will get data on how efficiently the commercial buildings are using energy. We will create a dashboard and everybody would know what kind of energy is being used where,” explained Sanjay Sethi, Additional Metropolitan Commissioner, MMRDA.
According to MMRDA officials, BKC uses 180 megawatt power per day, while Mumbai city consumes around 3,400 megawatts. The ace complex spread over 370 hectares has over 60 buildings which include Reserve Bank of India, Income Tax and Sales Tax, CitiBank, IL&FS, NABARD, National Stock Exchange, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Standard Chartered, SEBI, etc.
He added: “We want them to share the energy usage. When we say we are going to name companies [on the web-based dashboard], it is not shaming. We want them to share their best practices. Then in the next level we will make the changes, but first thing is to identify.”
According to officials, such practices are shared in developed countries.
“In BKC, there is no concept of energy-saving. Such an initiative will encourage them to look at their power consumption in comparison with other buildings. Such practices are adopted by business districts across the globe,” an MMRDA official. Sethi added that this initiative by MMRDA will lower the power bills for the establishments.
