Thermal and lighting behavior of office buildings in Santiago of Chile. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2011.12.016

Abstract

Overheating, high cooling energy demand and glare are recurrent problems in office buildings in Santiago.It is necessary to know the influence of different architectural strategies in energy demands to meetthermal comfort of the users and energy efficiency. Based on dynamic simulations, cooling and heatingdemand are estimated for an office building located in Santiago. It is shown that the size of envelope’sglazed areas highly influences the energy demand. A totally glazed fac¸ ade building might reach up to155 kWh/m2 year for total cooling and heating demands. On the other hand, in a building with a windowto-wall ratio (WWR) of 20%, external solar protection and selective glazing, demand might be as low as25 kWh/m2 year. If night ventilation is applied during cooling periods an additional reduction of 37% canbe achieved. A WWR of 20% is enough to keep a useful daylight around 80% of the time throughout theyear. Main conclusions are: (i) for the climate conditions of Santiago, completely glazed fac¸ ades are notrecommended, even with selective glazing; (ii) night ventilation shows to be highly effective to reducecooling demand; and (iii) lower WWRs with solar protection can achieve a better daylight performancethan larger WWRs due to prevention of glare.