A Comprehensive Analysis of Energy and Daylighting Impact of Window Shading Systems and Control Strategies on Commercial Buildings in the United States

Abstract

Commercial buildings consume approximately 1.9 EJ of energy in the United States, 50% of which is for heating, cooling, and lighting applications. It is estimated that windows contribute up to 34% of the energy used for heating and cooling. However, window retrofits are not often undertaken to increase energy efficiency because of the high cost and disruptive nature of window installation. Highly efficient window technologies would also need shading devices for glare prevention and visual comfort. An automated window shading system with an appropriate control strategy is a technology that can reduce energy demand, maintain occupant comfort, and enhance the aesthetics and privacy of the built environment. However, the benefits of the automated shades currently used by the shading industry are not well studied. The topic merits an analysis that will help building owners, designers and engineers, and utilities make informed decisions using knowledge of the impact of this technology on energy consumption, peak demand, daylighting, and occupant comfort. This study uses integrated daylight and whole-building energy simulation to evaluate the performance of various control strategies that the shading industry uses in commercial office buildings. The analysis was performed for three different vintages of medium office buildings at six different locations in United States. The results obtained show the control strategies enabled cooling energy savings of up to 40% using exterior shading, and lighting energy savings of up to 25%. The control strategies described can help building engineers and researchers explore different control methods used to control shading in actual buildings but rarely discussed in the literature. This information will give researchers the opportunity to investigate potential improvements in current technologies and their performance.

Efficiency of Natural Lighting in Office Buildings on the Example of a Building Located in Poland

“…), natomiast przykładem rozwiązania zaliczanego do drugiej kategorii mogą być np. systemy przesłaniania okien (Kunwar N., Bhandari M., 2020).…”

“…), while an example of a solution belonging to the second category can be e.g. window shading systems (Kunwar N., Bhandari M., 2020).…”

The Impact of a Mobile Shading System and a Phase-Change Heat Store on the Thermal Functioning of a Transparent Building Partition

“…Considerations on various control systems for complex building shading systems located in the United States are presented in [ 7 ]. The authors investigated the effect of using various strategies to counteract excessive overheating and over-lighting of offices in six US locations.…”

“…Modelling the thermal functioning of buildings and the installation systems contained in them is possible thanks to advanced software systems such as IDA ICE, described in [ 27 ], EnergyPlus™ [ 7 , 11 , 13 , 19 , 35 , 36 ] and MatLab [ 25 ], enabling the analysis of the functioning of the building and its individual parts and partitions according to available climatic data before and after PCM modification. The results of modelling the heat demand of a building on the basis of meteorological data using the Wiener process are described in [ 37 ].…”

Acquiring the Foremost Window Allocation Strategy to Achieve the Best Trade-Off among Energy, Environmental, and Comfort Criteria in a Building

“…In another study, Delgarm et al [1] considered the same two building aspects as [20] and used the EnergyPlus building simulation tool to evaluate them. Moreover, in some other works, [8,15], the impact of some design strategies, such as window-to-wall ratio (WWR) and window shading system, on energy demand and daylighting have been analyzed by employing EnergyPlus for energy simulation and Radiance and DAYSIM (developed by the National Research Council Canada and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems) for daylighting analysis.…”