Simulation Results of Active Solar Shading Louvres Collector for an Office Building Energy Supply

Shading louvres offer maintenance-free, aesthetically pleasing protection from solar gains, which can cause visual and thermal discomfort in addition to unnecessary increase in building energy demands. In most office buildings there is an increasing demand for heating in winter and cooling in summer. The conventional passive louvres could be converted to active louvres, and used to convert the incident solar radiation to a useful energy. In this way, the shading louvres could be used to supply useful energy that could offset the building thermal and cooling loads. This paper presents results of a study carried out to evaluate the benefit of employing shading louvres to serve as active solar collectors for the purpose of energy provision in office buildings. A solar louvre collector system has been designed for use in an office building and simulated dynamically using TRNSYS [1] simulation software. The results have shown a significant reduction in the building energy consumption, when solar shading louvres are used as solar energy collectors, compared to the case of a building without active louvres.