2011

FRANCISCO RICARDO
MARTINEZ VILLALVAZO
ENERGY MODELLING AND
MONITORING
03/12/2011
DAYLIGHT CONTROL REPORT
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INDEX
I. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................3
II. MODEL DESCRIPTION....................................................................................................4
Image 1.1 (original model)..................................................................................................4
III. CHANGES MADE TO THE MODEL...................................................................................4
Image 3.1 2 controls in office B...........................................................................................4
IV. RESULTS.......................................................................................................................4
Image 4.1Temperature for summer and winter first simulation.........................................5
Image 4.1.1Heating and cooling loads requirements first simulation................................6
Image 4.2Heating and cooling loads for winter 2
nd
simulation...........................................6
Image 4.2.1Heating and cooling loads for summer 2
nd
simulation ....................................6
Image 4.3Heating and cooling loads for winter 3
rd
simulation...........................................6
Image 4.3.1 Heating and cooling loads for spring 3
rd
simulation.......................................7
Image 4.3.2 Heating and cooling loads for summer 3
rd
simulation....................................7
V. DISCUSSION AND OTHER CONCLUSIONS.......................................................................7
VI. REFERENCES.................................................................................................................8














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DAYLIGHT CONTROL
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, people are receiving considerable increments in their electricity bills as a consequence of
the rise of fuel prices. And also the impact to the environment of producing electricity by non
renewable methods is growing making it a big problem to society. Therefore, a lot of different ways
to overcome this situation have been adopted by our society. One of these methods is the lighting
control.
Lighting controls have gained an extraordinary degree of popularity in recent years because they pay
for themselves so quickly due to the energy savings and other benefits they can provide. It is
particularly interesting to see what has happened to the cost of lighting controls over the years.
While the price of so many other products has increased, the cost of modern lighting controls has
come down, due in large part of the mass production of electronic components and competition;
making them easy to purchase and install in a determined building.
As stated in the book Environmental Science in Building by Randall Mc Mullan, lighting control can
be achieved by the following methods: timer, daylight and occupation controls (1). This report is
focusing on one of these methods when designing a building which is daylight control. What if you
could control the electric lights according to the availability of natural daylight? This is an obvious
method of saving energy and money.
The daylight illuminance level in a zone depends on many factors such as the sky position, sun
position, photocell sensor positions, location, size, and glass transmittance of windows, window
shades and reflectance of interior surfaces (2). Therefore, the reduction of electric lighting depends
of daylight illuminance level, illuminance set point, fraction of zone controlled and type of lighting
control(3).
Daylight control systems use strategic located photocells to determine the ambient light level. This
information is fed to a control device that then rises or lowers luminaries output or turns off
selected luminaries to maintain the amount of light set for the space. The adjustment occurs
gradually, so occupants in a space are not aware of it. Another important point to comment is that
these systems include a response delay feature which is used to prevent frequent adjustments due
to passing clouds or similar phenomena.
Some buildings are designed to take advantage of daylight. Others have daylight available to them
and using that daylight may or may not be worthwhile, depending on factors such as the tasks being
performed and on the orientation of workstations with respect to windows. Daylight also brings heat
with it, which, in summer, might necessitate to cooling unless appropriate window films are
installed. In other words, if a building has not been designed to use daylight, some study is needed
to help assure it can be put to positive use and to establish exactly what needs to be done in order
to realize that gain.
The objective of this paper is to understand the effect of lighting control on building heating/cooling
requirements. In order to demonstrate this, a sample model was chosen from the ESP-r software.
And a series of changes were made to the model to simulate different situations.
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II. MODEL DESCRIPTION
The original model was formed by 3 main
areas: office A, office B and a corridor. At
the beginning, both offices had the same
characteristics which were: occupancy by 1
person during office hours; they had
lighting at 10W/m2 and one computer in
each room. Each office possessed a south-
facing window. It was situated in latitude
4600N, which means that this building
was in an isolated area in Lyon France
where the climate is oceanic and
subtropical. Winters are not really cold;
around 4C average in February and
summers are very warm with an average of 22C in July.
An addition of a lighting gain of 106W was made for the occupied period from 7am to 5pm on
weekdays and Saturdays as a casual gain. It was assumed that the heat from the lights was emitted
as a 50% convective and 50% radiative gain. This gain was based on two Philips luminaries providing
a work plane illuminance of 500 lux.
III. CHANGES MADE TO THE MODEL
1. After the model was simulated in two different seasons with the addition of lighting gain in office
A, the same changes were made to office B making the two zones equal again.
2. The next step was to define a single lighting zone control where the sensed illuminance was
calculated by a user defined daylight factor. The control period was set to 0-24, and the photocell
was located in the centre of the ceiling, facing down with the following coordinates (1.50, 2.25, 2.80,
0, 0, -1.0). Also, the daylight factor was changed to 0.1145 which means that the photocell responds
to a daylight factor of 11.45% on the working plane. The model was then simulated for three
different seasons: winter, summer and spring, and the results obtained are given in the next chapter
of this paper.
3. For the purpose of evaluating the difference between
having one or two lighting controls. Two new lighting
zone controls were added to office B. One of them was a
perimeter zone with the next characteristics: the control
period was changed to 0-24, and for the photocell data
the proportion of gain was set as 0.5. The photocell was
moved to the coordinates (4.5, 1.125, 2.80, 0, 0, -1.00),
the location in the office is shown in image 3.1. Finally
the daylight factor was set to 0.1761 as specified.
4. The second zone was defined as a core lighting zone
with the next characteristics: the proportion of the gain


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was set to 0.5; the photocell was moved to the coordinates (4.50, 3.375, 2.80, 0, 0, -1.0), the location
can be observed in image 3.1 and the light factor was set to 0.0449.
5. In order to compare the performance in terms of heating and cooling loads between the two
offices, the model was simulated with these new characteristics for three seasons during the year:
winter, summer and spring.
IV. RESULTS
4.1 Summer and winter simulations of the model with lighting casual gain changed for office A.
It can be observed in Image 4.1
that the air temperature was
slightly higher during both
seasons in office A, with an
average ambient temperature
during the summer of 23.58 C
compared to 23.52 C reached
in office B. For the winter
simulation, the average
temperature for office A was
17.52 C while in office B it
reached 17.43C.

There was also a variation in the
heating and cooling loads, as it can be
seen in image 4.1.1. During the
winter, office A required a total of 82
heating hours while office B needed
100.5 hours. Something similar
happened during the summer, office
A required 67 hours of cooling
compared to 63 hours needed in
office B.


4.2 Summer, winter and spring simulations with the offices having a lighting casual gain of 106W and
office A owning a single lighting zone
It is time now to analyze the changes in heating and cooling loads as a result of the introduction of a
single lighting zone in office A. As shown in image 4.2, during the winter simulation office A required
a higher heating load than office B. The maximum heating load reached 0.5 kW and similar values all
over the week except for Sunday. The maximum cooling load was reached by office B with a value of
almost 1 KW during day three in that week.


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It can be observed in image 4.2.1 that
during the summer simulation office A
required less cooling loads than office B.
The maximum cooling load was around 1
KW reached on day five by office B during
day 5 and no heating was required on this
season of the year.
Finally, image 4.2.2 shows that for the
spring simulation, office A had less cooling
requirements than office B with a maximum peak of 1 KW and 1.3KW respectively.

4.3 Summer, winter and spring simulations with defined lighting control scheme with multiple
lighting zones in office B.
The last step of this analysis was to simulate
in different seasons of the year the effect
that installing two different lighting zones in
office B would have comparing the single
control previously installed in office A.
Image 4.3 shows the heating and cooling
loads of both offices during a week in
winter, both offices have a slightly variation
on the required loads reaching a maximum
heating load of 0.51 kW and a maximum
cooling load of around 0.8 kW. On the other
hand, in summer and spring the heating and
cooling requirements were almost the same
for both offices as shown in images 4.3.1
and 4.3.2. Apparently adding a new control in office B had a small effect on the results.




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V. DISCUSSION AND OTHER CONCLUSIONS
With the addition of the Philips luminaries in office A, there was in increment in the dry bulb
temperature in this office during both winter and summer simulations. Also the heating and cooling
requirements were affected by this change. As commented in the results section, office required less
heating hours than office B during the winter simulation while in the summer the cooling
requirements were higher in office A. This is because the total sensible casual gain incremented
from 100 to 200w/m2 when the lighting casual gain of 106W was added to office A. More heat was
supplied in this office during working days, and therefore less hours of heating were required during
the winter.
Even though, the addition of a single lighting control in office A caused a reduction in the heating
and cooling requirements in the three different chosen seasons during the year; The reduction was
not really significant, and this let us know that the location of the photocell was not the ideal one. As
commented before the use of this type of control implies diffuse daylight to effectively light interior
spaces in this case office A.
The same kinds of results were obtained after adding two daylight controls to office B. In office B the
photocells were positioned near the south facing window and the other next to the entrance. In
summer and in spring, the room was illuminated by diffuse daylight between working hours so
having two controls instead of one made no difference in the heating and cooling requirements.
However, during the winter where the amount of daylight is a lot less than in the other seasons; the
photocell located near to the window in office B, will turn the luminaries down while the lights in the
rest of the room will remain on. So this explains why only during this season having two controls
instead of one had a positive impact on the heating requirements.
It can be assumed that having more photo-sensors in a room can sometimes help to reduce the
electricity requirements. Evaluating this model, it can be said that some of the characteristics
required to obtain a good luminance level were met, like for example:
Even though the sky and sun position varied during the seasons, it was enough daylight to
illuminate the room quite a lot.

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The location was not the ideal one for the use of this type of controls, but it still was good
enough. It is a common misunderstanding to think that daylighting can only be done in areas
where there is a predominance of sunny, clear days such as Mexico. In fact many places with
over 50% cloudy days can cost-effectively use daylight controls (4).
Some other characteristics were not met, like the location of the photocell sensor positions, and the
size of the office which was too small to handle two controls. Photocells should be aimed north to
view the reflected light of the north sky. This way they are not biased by the directionality of
east/west exposure or degraded by intense southern exposure (5).
So it can be said that to effectively apply this strategy requires more knowledge than just plugging a
sensor into dimming ballasts. As seen in the previous paragraphs a series of factors need to be met
in order to have an efficient daylight control system. The correct use of this technology will provide
good advantages such as the reduction in the use of electricity and as a consequence lower
electricity bills and less use of energy.

REFERENCES
BOOKS:
(1) Mc Mullan, Randall. Environmental Science in Building. 5
th
edition. PALGRAVE. 2002.
(2) Simpson S, Robert. Lighting control technology and applications. FOCAL PRESS 2003.
(3)
(4) Di Loui, Craig. Lighting control handbook. The Fairmont Press Inc 2007.
(5)
OTHER REFERENCES:
ESP-r software provided by the Department of Mechanical Engineering. University of
Strathclyde
www.enconor.com/ficheros/Caracteristicas_del_sensor_de_luz.doc