Simulating the annual energy demand to meet non-visual health recommendations from a luminaire level lighting control system

Abstract

This paper introduces a digital simulation workflow that calculates annual eye-level illuminance and energy demand from daylight and electric lighting sources for an array of view positions across 9-channels of spectral data. This Radiance-based workflow combines parts of the LARK spectral lighting code to offer better spectral resolution and accuracy when computing melanopic lx to evaluate the non-visual health potential for view positions within a digital model. The authors have implemented a series of annual climate-driven simulations and post-processed time-series of resulting data using the R statistical analysis software to compute Equivalent Melanopic Lux (EML) and energy demand (kWh) for an array of view positions and view directions in a digital model. This allows us to compute the energy demand of a given lighting and shading control scenario, which is optimized by hourly daylight availability to meet a recommended level of melanopic lx. This combined workflow uses digital models of an interior space to evaluate the annual potential of non-visual light exposure under different architectural, lighting, and shading control scenarios. This paper demonstrate the utility of this workflow by evaluating a luminaire-level lighting controls (LLLC) system to meet eye-level light exposure recommendations from the WELL Building Institute Feature L03 Circadian Lighting Design and compare the energy demand between targeted melanopic lux thresholds and shading control scenarios.