AUTOMATIC SUN SHADES, AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Can automatically controlled sun shades significantly reduce summer heat gain and optimize winter passive solar heating in residential applications? This paper reports the results of a two year study using a pair of full height test cells, one of which had a microprocessor controlled movable external or internal sun shade, while the other was an unshaded reference case. For comparison purposes the experimental cell was also operated with a whole house fan. The performance of selected representative tests are reported here for both summer and winter conditions. This paper also describes how hourly data recorded in these test cells was used to validate HEED, a well known whole-building energy simulation program. Once HEED was shown to accurately predict the measured performance of the shades in the test cells, then it was used to model the performance of these same automatic operable shades in each of California’s sixteen climate zones