daylight

This paper describes Post Occupancy Evaluation survey and physical measurements of five families living for one year or longer in five houses located in Germany, Austria, France and UK, all part of the Model Home 2020 project. The houses are built according to Active House principles and focus on high performance on indoor environmental quality, energy performance and environmental impact. The survey is carried out seasonally during the test year when the family lives in the house to capture seasonal variations. Physical measurements were made in all main rooms of the houses.

The term of “Active House” recently developed, addressing houses that target a balanced optimization of indoor environmental quality, energy performance and environmental performance. According to the idea of not only being energy efficient and eco-friendly, Active Houses equally focus on indoor environmental qualities, in particular daylight and air. With their tendency towards intensive sun penetration, natural ventilative systems and generally intensive connections to the exterior, Active Houses challenge the balance of technical and individual indoor climate control.

The Kindergarten Solhuset is built according to the Active House vision with an emphasize of good daylight conditions and fresh air. The house was completed in 2011, and detailed measurements of the indoor environment have been performed since the completion. The daylight performance is evaluated with daylight factor simulations. The main activity rooms have daylight factors of 7%, while the innermost rooms with only roof windows achieve a high daylight factor of 4%. Electrical light is used frequently in daytime during the winter, but much less frequently during summer.

The aim of the present study was to determine the applicability of a genetic algorithm for the optimization of daylighting systems, as well as the requirements for the lighting simulations to be used. Furthermore, by testing the daylighting performance of a building's facade when several parameters are allowed to change simultaneously, the results were used as a complement of previous parametric studies. The goal of the optimization was to maximize energy savings by reducing visual discomfort while maintaining good daylight penetration.

Daylighting control systems have quite high potential to reduce building’s energy consumption and peak demand. Despite this potential, reported poor performance, didn’t allow substantial increase in their installation rates. Thus during design stage, is e

The IEA, section ECBCS (Energy Conservation in Buildings and Community systems), has launched the project Annex 45 ‘Energy Efficient Electric Lighting for Buildings’, of which subtask B deals with innovative technical solutions. Part of the work is to def

Application of lighting control technologies has increased the public interest. Although these technologies have been promoted during the last years their successful use in buildings has been accomplished in a small percentage of new projects. One reason is the difficulty in quantifying the energy savings and thus the subsequent payback period.

In this paper we present a procedure to test software ability to describe daylight sources. The method will be applied to Lightscape release 3.2 [1]. The results have been achieved independently from the software developers comparing software results with analytical solutions. The tests deal with: a) definition of the algorithms used to represents different skies; b) influence of sun position; c) ground reflection management. Finally suggestions on how to use Lightscape in your daylight design are given.

This paper presents an innovative roof design. The roof is designed in response to the Tropical climate of Thailand with respect to human thermal comfort. It is composed of a combination of CPAC Monier concrete and transparent tiles on the outer side, air gap and another combination of gypsum with aluminum foil board and translucent sheets on the house side. It has two functions in operation: In daytime the roof acts as a solar chimney and induces natural ventilation. The transparent tile provides not only ,sufficient daylight for housing but also help in increasing the ventilation rate.

This paper describes a European project to produce comprehensive design guidance on urban layout to ensure good access to solar gain, daylighting and passive cooling. The project involves: