New Green Buildings Coming Up In ISRO Campus!!

Space technology is getting a green lining to it these ‘power-less’ summer days. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is embracing green building concepts and solar power big-time with the southern states, where  the space agency has most of its frontline facilities, starved of power this summer.

 ISRO has instructed all its units, including those in Kerala, that new green building technologies and ‘sun power’ are to be tapped to the utmost in new buildings coming up on their campuses.

 The space agency, which has some big missions lined up for this year, is chanting the energy conservation mantra quite seriously when it comes to day-to-day use of electricity on its campuses, ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan said.

“We’ve been practising energy conservation for decades. But we are are fully aware of the current situation,” Radhakrishnan said.

 

“Two of our units, the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) at Hyderabad and the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory near Tirupathi, have already begun tapping solar power.

 “New civil constructions coming up on our campuses will be using green technologies, especially how natural light can be exploited,” he said.

 Some ISRO facilities, like the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) at Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu, have test facilities which are real power-guzzlers. At the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) at Thumba in Thiruvananthapuram, such tests are relatively rarer.

But those tests which indeed demand large amounts of electricity -  hypersonic wind tunnel tests and the plasma wind tunnel tests, for instance - are now performed during off-peak hours, VSSC director S Ramakrishnan said.

“The power crisis has not affected our work here so far. But definitely we have to think about alternative sources of energy in the days ahead,” he said.

 Energy conservation is the buzz-word at another ISRO unit in the district - the LPSC at Valiyamala.

Switch off fans and lights when not needed and go soft particularly on air conditioners, the staff have been told, LPSC director M C Dathan said.

“I’ve already issued a circular in this regard,” he said.

Please view my project report on 5KW BIPV solar power system.

 

Follow me on Academia.edu


Thank you for reading.please give your feedback!!