Daylight analysis and enhancing strategies for a low rise office building in composite climate of India

Artificial lighting is one of the visible source energy consumption in any industries. Energy consumption can be minimized by enhancing the daylight availability in the building. In this paper, daylight availability in the interior of a low rise building located in the composite climate of India, based on the actual design of the building is studied. Based on the results of preliminary analysis, two strategies to enhance the daylight penetration to the interior of the building i.e. increasing Visual Light Transmittance (VLT) of the window glass and adding new windows at the south west facade are proposed and analyzed in this paper. Simulation based study is adopted using Ecotect modeling tool and Radiance software. Illuminance in lux is taken as the performance indicator in this study. The results indicate that, with the fixed design and orientation of the building, adding windows on south west facade with 35% VLT gives the maximum optimally illuminated area in the building.