Modeling of electrochromic glazing switching control strategies in micro-DOE-2.1E

This paper aims to advance the knowledge related to the simulation of electrochromic glazing switching control. First, a critical evaluation of existing control strategies currently available in the DOE-2.1E program was performed to study the effect of several driving variables on the cooling load of an existing large office building. Second, the present capabilities of the DOE-2.1E program were expanded using the Functional Values approach which enables the user to introduce new algorithms (e.g., control strategies) without recompiling the program. Third, the effect of switching time was studied for the buildings perimeter zones. Since electrochromic windows will affect both building energy consumption and visual quality, the optimization of the switching time was formulated as a multi-objective problem with two conflicting objectives (energy and visual quality). The Pareto optimum solutions are shown for different weighting coefficients applied to the energy performance and visual quality. General rules for switching were then extracted from the results, and will be used in future work to formulate the basis of an optimized switching strategy to be analyzed using the DOE-2.1E program.