Solar Radiation Control Using Electrochromic Smart Windows, an Approach toward Building Energy Optimization

Abstract

Due to notable part of buildings in the global energy consumption, it is of significant importance to design various scenarios to optimize building energy consumption. Smart windows including electrochromic types are some recently developed ideas that may help through this way controlling the solar radiation. Here a residential building is studied to analyze the performance of electrochromic smart windows in compare with simple single glazing and also triple glazing windows in the cities of Tehran and Yazd, as two choices of hot and dry climate. Results indicate that in the city of Tehran, when comparing with simple single glazing windows, in the case of use of electrochromic windows, 20% and 10% saving is observable in gas and electricity consumption, respectively. These are 17.1% and 7.2% when implementing triple glazing windows. In the city of Yazd also this trend has been experienced with 22% and 12.6% saving in natural gas and electricity in the case of electrochromic smart windows, respectively and that of 17.5% and 8.1% for triple glazing windows, respectively. So implementing this smart window type has led to the building energy optimization by the mean of controlling the amount of solar radiation allowed in the building.