Designed for Sustainability: The Meluha has been awarded the ECOTEL Certification for meeting its criteria and making sustainability integral to the company's business strategy.

This article focuses on the strategies used by the Hotel in following the Certification's focus areas of conservation of resources (Energy and Water) and reduction in landfill waste, which also had the benefit of financial savings (more than Rs. 83 lakh saved from waste reduction alone in 2013/14). In addition, it is also socially responsible. 

About the Hotel

Meluha, The Fern, An ECOTEL Hotel is a 141-room business hotel in Hirannadani Gardens in Mumbai. This is a 250-acre residential township with neo-classical architecture close to Powai Lake. The entire township integrates elements of sustainability in its planning, which includes a sewage treatment plant that recycles waste water and rainwater harvesting.

Energy Efficient Features

The hospitality sector consumes a high amount of energy and most of this energy is derived from fossil sources, increasing the sector's contribution to global warming. Additionally, this high consumption leads to a concomittant high operational expense for energy.

Design and Construction

The design of The Meluha with its unique parabolic shape brings architectural interest as well as energy efficiency to the hotel.

The building is oriented to face the northeast direction allowing sunlight to illuminate the hotel while limiting direct penetration through an effective sun protection system comprising of a double facade of external arches and columns and internal walls and double glazed windows.

The large glass windows have a U-Value of 1.7 W/m²/K (reduces the heat loss or gain by 30% as compared to single glass).

Thus, while this design allows use of daylight as natural light, eliminating the need for artificial lighting (leading to increased energy thereby expenses), the building envelopes save the energy requirement for air-conditioning and lighting.

The rooftop, responsible for heat gain through solar radiation, has a three-layered insulation of natural resource COBA (clay brick). 

Briefly, Power and Energy Management is done by having a power factor close to unity; installing a BMS; metering of incoming energy and submetering of all main consumption areas with regular followups; and staggering of operations to non-peak hours of electricity.

Reduction in consumption is achieved by:

• Energy efficient lighting in the form of LEDs and PL lamps with appropriate control like dimmers and sensors in public toilets.
• Demand driven and technologically-advanced Air conditioning. The HVAC, usually the major energy consumer in every building, has 3 STL (storage thermal latent) tanks. Ice is made at night at lowest tariff rates and the main chiller plant is shut down during the highest tariff period.

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