The comparative performance assessment of dynamic shading devices for different climatic regions in Turkey

Many factors affect the evolution of buildings; these are mainly energy issues, developments in technology and changed people expectations. Energy concerns around the world drastically risen in recent years. Since buildings consume a significant portion of the total energy, energy efficient building design became crucial. Moreover, awareness of people related to the environment increased and environmentally friendly designs are started to be preferred. The expectations of people in terms of comfort is also increased. These factors brought a new role in the overall building concept and lead to seeking new architectural approaches which can meet today's requirements.The dynamic facade is one of to these approaches which has a high potential regarding overall performance improvement of the building. This study aimed to prove potential of dynamic shadings. Within this frame, the model representing a single office room is modeled through EnergyPlus building energy simulation program. The base case model is extended with dynamic shading device variations related to material and control strategies and their effects on the energy consumption of office buildings in the three major cities in Turkey and also for two main orientations (south and west) are evaluated. Three biggest cities throughout Turkey were selected to represent a range in the severity of the climatic zones: Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir. The evaluation is done in terms of energy demand (heating, cooling, and lighting) and visual comfort (glare and illuminance level). The results of the simulations show that dynamic shadings have great potential regarding energy savings and visual comfort improvement. Energy savings obtained in all examined cases. As expected, the most energy savings are obtained in the city of İzmir which is a cooling dominated city by about 25% reduction in overall energy demand. . The visual comfort of the occupants is significantly improved in all cases. There is about 80% discomfort hour percentage when no shading implemented, and it is entirely or mostly eliminated with all control strategies of dynamic shading. Even though in Ankara which is a heating dominated city the importance of dynamic shading cannot be ignored because of the increase in visual comfort. The control parameters and their thresholds are kept same to be able to make comparisons. However, they need to be adapted according to the climate, location, orientation, etc. The decision of the most suitable combination of shadings and its control needs to be comprehensively analyzed. There are also some innovative shading systems which are coupled with energy generation plug. As the solar energy generation potential of Turkey is high, solar energy generation integrated shading systems need to be considered for further developments.