Abstract
Working with daylight simulations on a regular basis, the authors discovered that it is increasingly challenging to achieve daylight criteria in new building projects. In addition to complex building designs, a new European Standard was published in 2018 named EN 17037:2018 Daylight in Buildings, which includes climate-based daylight simulations. These new criteria require a different type of simulation and presentation of results, compared to the simplified method of calculating average daylight factor, which is mostly used today. The authors have created, tested and validated scripts for performing climate-based daylighting simulations, using Rhinoceros and Grasshopper. The script designed for climate-based daylight simulations, showed too extensive differences between supposedly equivalent criteria for daylight factor and daylight autonomy, meaning it can’t be applied in construction projects as the only documentation of daylight availability. Further testing and investigation of the climate-based daylight script has to be done, in order to perform correct evaluations of realistic daylighting conditions.
Highlights
Working with daylight simulations on a regular basis, the authors discovered that it is increasingly challenging to achieve daylight criteria in new building projects
Being able to perform climate-based daylight simulations, including real climatic data, increases the ability to provide a close to realistic approach to daylight performance
The chosen approach included the creation of two scripts, one for simulating daylight factor and one for daylight autonomy
Summary
Working with daylight simulations on a regular basis, the authors discovered that it is increasingly challenging to achieve daylight criteria in new building projects. In addition to complex building designs, a new European Standard was published in 2018 named EN 17037:2018 Daylight in Buildings This standard, as well as other certification systems such as BREEAM-NOR, LEED and WELL, include climate-based daylight requirements. The daylight factor is the oldest daylight availability metric and was defined by Moon and Spencer in 1942 [1] as the ratio of the internal illuminance at a point in a building to the unshaded, external horizontal illuminance under a CIE overcast sky [2]. This means that “the daylight factor is independent of building location and orientation, season, time of day, direct solar ingress and variable sky conditions” [3]. “The result is a daylight factor optimized building, admitting as much daylight as possible into the building, neglecting arising issues concerning comfort and energy use” [3]
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