“Windancer” Windmills Have Some Great Features

With their windmills starting rotation in breeze as light as 1m/s, Wind Simplicity’s designs would be great for many parts of India that are not on the conventional wind-map. They are built to withstand snow and ice – not problems we face every day in our tropical climate!  Now if only some Indian manufacturer would tie up with them to make these in India…

Edit: The website <http://www.windsimplicity.ca/> doesn’t seem to be working any longer but here is the archived page in case you’re still interested.

GRIHA v/s LEED – which is the better system

This article from ConstructionWeek is sure to fuel a debate that could go on forever with proponents of both systems backing their favourite.  Any rating system can be manipulated and, in this regard, GRIHA scores higher because there is lot less scope to fudge it.  More importantly, LEED gives points for, say, high-tech systems to save air-conditioning costs whereas GRIHA rewards you for passive cooling that does away with the air-conditioning in the first place – a far more appropriate strategy in a country that is chronically short of power.

At the end of the day, I just use the GRIHA checklist to do a self-analysis and see if there is some way to improve the design.

See :: Government to Lead by Example for Green Buildings