Method for including detailed evaluation of daylight levels in Be06

Good daylight conditions in office buildings have become an important issue due to new European regulatory demands which include energy consumption for electrical lighting in the building energy frame. Good daylight conditions in offices are thus in increased focus as an energy conserving measure. In order to evaluate whether a certain design is good daylight design or not building designers must perform detailed evaluation of daylight levels, including the daylight performance of dynamic solar shadings, and include these in the energy performance evaluation. However, the mandatory national calculation tool in Denmark (Be06) for evaluating the energy performance of buildings is currently using a simple representation of available daylight in a room and simple assumptions regarding the control of shading devices. In a case example, this is leading to an overestimation of the energy consumption for electrical lighting by 30% compared to the method suggested in this paper, which is based on hourly calculated illuminance levels in a representative point in the workspace. Implementing the suggested method in Be06 would be a better representation of the reality compared to the current method. Furthermore it will reward the efforts of building designers who are designing buildings with good daylight conditions, which also include the use of dynamic controlled external solar shadings, and encourage the design of low energy buildings.