Occupants’ impact on indoor thermal comfort: a co-simulation study on stochastic control of solar shades

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of manually operated solar shades on indoor thermal comfort. A developed stochastic model for manual solar shades was modelled in Building Controls Virtual Test Bed, which was coupled with EnergyPlus for co-simulation. Movable solar shades were compared with two unshaded windows (clear double-pane and low-e double-pane). Two objective indices (room base temperature and transmitted solar radiation) and one subjective index (modified predicted mean vote (PMV) index (PMVrad) that considers solar radiation on the human body) were used to evaluate the indoor thermal performance. Results show that external solar shades achieve the best performance in terms of all three indices, especially for PMVrad, hours of comfortable conditions are higher than unshaded windows by 20.6–37.3%. Despite achieving relatively high performance, solar shades are operated infrequently and for about 30% of work time they are not adjusted appropriately, leading to a decrease in indoor thermal comfort.