Daylight harvesting is an essential strategy that is often used to enhance both the design and performance of an architectural project. Windows, as crucial architectural elements, not only admit natural light into spaces but also provide the occupants with visual connections. However, the excessive usage of windows brings an uncontrolled amount of solar energy to the spaces and negatively affect the building's energy performance.
When utilizing passive design strategies such as daylight harvesting, several parameters, including the electrical lighting system, can impact the outcome. The current study investigates the role of lighting systems on daylight harvesting's effectiveness and their impact on window dimension and total energy consumption. In this study, the optimum window-to-wall ratio of an open office in the presence of two different light sources (LED and fluorescent) is explored through a computer simulation method. A combination of tools including AGi32, ElumTools, OpenStudio, EnergyPlus, Radiance, and MATLAB helps to conduct the simulation and deliver optimal results.
In the results and conclusion chapter, the study provides guidelines to specify optimal window percentages considering two lighting systems in each cardinal direction. Importantly, the guideline focuses only on energy performance and not on the spatial quality of the design. / Master of Architecture / Harnessing daylight with the use of windows helps to offset parts of the electric lighting needs, and decrease the total building energy consumption. This is accomplished by using glazed materials to admit daylight and lighting control systems, which can respond to the dynamic light level. However, improper implementation of a passive daylighting strategy may cause increased energy consumption. Sunlight is accompanied by solar heat radiation which can increase the HVAC load of a space and compromise the energy savings achieved by daylighting. Therefore, a balance between solar heat and light gain is required to fully take advantage of solar energy without reverse impacts.
Concerning the mentioned balance, recent advancements in lighting technology question the effectiveness of natural light in reducing whole-building energy consumption. Due to the high energy efficiency of LED luminaires, lighting power consumption is rather low, even when the lighting system operates at full capacity. Therefore, it is unclear whether the solar energy coming through glazed materials works to the advantage or disadvantage of total building energy consumption. This study hypothesized that the total energy consumption of an open office with LED luminaires would be less in absence of solar energy compared to a scenario which utilizes the solar energy. A simulation-based methodology, using a combination of photometric computation and building energy simulation tools, was utilized to examine the hypothesis and explore the impacts of lighting systems on the optimum window-to-wall ratio.
The results provide a helpful guideline which highlights the impact of lighting systems on window dimensions and their mutual effect on whole-building energy consumption. Although the optimum window-to-wall ratios suggested by this study only concern energy consumption, integration of them with occupants' preferences can propose an acceptable window-to-wall ratio that satisfies both design quality and performance of a building.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/100642 |
| Date | 21 October 2020 |
| Creators | Zolfaghari, Zahra |
| Contributors | Architecture, Jones, James R., Schubert, Robert P., Gibbons, Ronald B. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds