The Technical Quality Regulation on the Energy Efficiency of Commercial, Service and Public Buildings (RTQ-C) is the Brazilian reference for evaluating the energy performance of buildings. This study focuses on the influence of solar protection devices in building consumption based on this code. A building without solar devices is analysed under the prescriptive method of RTQ-C. Overhangs and lightshelves are designed for the building and the performance under RTQ-C is recalculated. Then, the same devices are applied to a room in the building. The total energy consumption of the room with and without solar devices is obtained through computer simulation. The results of this process are the basis for a discussion about the performance evaluation criterion of the prescriptive method of RTQ-C. The main results reinforce that the geometry and solar orientation of a device must be considered, although the prescriptive RTQ-C does not consider those aspects.
Building energy code; Building performance simulation; Solar protection device
