Study On The Energy Consumption Characteristics Of Daylighting In Commercial Buildings

With the development of economy, energy consumption in buildings is becoming more and more important in nowadays, and it has been an important issue to cut down building energy consumption as well as promote sustainable development without sacrifice the indoor environment. In commercial buildings, air-conditioning system and lighting consumed great component, and have great energy saving potentials. Take advantage of daylight to assistant artificial lighting is much important to cut down lighting energy consumption.In this article, we summarize the methods of daylighting, discussed the yearly, monthly and weekly illumination patterns as well as daylighting theory in DOE-2, which is the simulation engine of eQUEST. At the same time, we made some introduction of eQUEST and using it as a tool to analysis energy consumption of a real building. Based on the creation of an office building simulation model, we analysis the influence of skylighting to peak cooling load and energy end use such as cooling energy consumption, lighting energy consumption,heating energy consumption etc, and discussed the influence of visible transmittance, lighting density and control types to building energy consumption. Aiming at the typical cities in different climates in China, we analysis the characteristics of energy consumption between different areas. Besides, some differences between sidelighting and skylighting were discussed.According to the research we find that if it is properly designed, daylighting can cut down lighting energy consumption as well as cooling energy consumption and cooling peak load, and have an optimal fenestration which can make the total energy consumption lowest. Besides, light density and climates have great influence to the energy savings of daylighting, and the buildings have higher light density will have greater energy savings. What is more, daylighting buildings in the warm areas will have great energy saving potentials while in the cold areas, the energy savings is not distinct because of the navigate influence of daylighting to heating energy consumption.