A CRITICAL REVIEW OF SIMULATION TECHNIQUES FOR DAYLIGHT RESPONSIVE SYSTEMS

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.
The majority of existing simulation tools (which are embedded in building energy codes) needed during initial design- are based on the estimation of the potential energy savings due to daylight. The paper focus on the limitations of current simulation approaches comparing their results, in order to assess their accuracy. For this, special test cases have been developed exploiting their domain of validity.