Daylight and Energy Performance of Automated Control Strategies for Interior Roller Shades

The façades design should be considered a major issue in the design of energy-efficient buildings. Manually controlled shades aren’t often adjusted properly by the office occupants. This situation leads to an increasing in the electrical lighting as well as heating and cooling loads. That is why the use of dynamic façade components is increasing amongst building designs, being able to adapt to interior and exterior impacts, and thus increasing the occupant comfort and reducing the energy consumption. The study presented in this document evaluates the daylight and energy performance of two automated shading control strategies for interior roller shades in the case of an existing office building. Both strategies were applied to three types of interior roller shade fabrics combined with three glass types. Computer simulations were conducted using Radiance to calculate the illuminance at work-plane values and EnergyPlus for energy consumption. The results showed that automated shading control strategies have the potential to minimize the total annual energy demand and significantly improve the daylight performance. Also, the optical properties of the glass and roller shades fabric have a big impact on the overall performance