Impact of daylighting on total energy use in offices of varying architectural features in Italy: Results from a parametric study

The growing attention towards the optimization of the overall performance of a building, in terms of both indoor environmental quality and energy consumption, has brought about the need to carry out analyses, which consider the interactions of all affecting parameters. In particular, thermal and daylighting analysis should be carried out in synergy to ensure the best performance in both domains. Within this framework, the paper presents a study on daylighting and energy behavior of rooms with different architectural features. The study has been conceived to account for a broad range of possible configurations of office buildings in the climate site of Turin (Northern Italy), and has been performed through numerical simulations carried out with Daysim and EnergyPlus. The results outline the daylighting performance (in terms of spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA)) and the energy demand for lighting, heating and cooling and demonstrate that optimizing daylighting can lead to a reduction of the total energy demand of an office.