Daylight is an important strategy to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. For simulating the use of daylighting in buildings it is advisable to use computer programs that incorporate local weather data and use the Daylight Coefficients concept to process simulations. One of those tools is EnergyPlus, a software used for thermodynamic simulations in buildings. However, this software has some limitations, since it overestimates daylighting inside the building. In order to overcome those limitations, this study proposes a methodology to evaluate the energy efficiency of buildings considering daylighting through the combined use of two programs. The methodology consists of an evaluation of the luminous and energy performance through computational simulations using the Daysim and EnergyPlus programs. Daysim produces a report that describes the control of artificial lighting that is used in the simulation with EnergyPlus, which calculates the overall energy consumption of the environment being analysed. The results indicate that this methodology is adequate to overcome the limitations of the EnergyPlus software, and to evaluate the energy efficiency of buildings. This study shows an alternative and reliable way to include daylighting in the evaluation of the energy efficiency of buildings.
Energy efficiency; Daylighting; Computer simulation
