Methodology for Daylight Optimization towards Net Zero Buildings in Hot Arid Climate Case Studies the Visitor Center at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monuments, Ajo, Arizona

Abstract

World energy consumption attends to increase in all sectors, which leads to more CO2 emissions and air pollution. In 2016, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that world energy consumption will increase up to 48% by 2040. The building sector is the largest consumer of the energy. Consequently, the global needs a universal proposal to mitigate and reduce the impacts on the environment and the natural resources. The energy consumption is accumulative of different aspects, such as buildings, transportation, industrial and other sectors. The building sector is the largest consumer of the energy. The energy consumption in the building is accumulative of different aspects of the annual usage, such as cooling, heating, lighting, and others. For instance, lighting consumes up to 22 % in the commercial buildings and 14% in the residential buildings in the hot-arid climate (Arizona). Therefore, this study focuses on proposing a method of daylight optimization that leads to Net-zero energy buildings in the hot-arid climate. Achieving Net Zero buildings needs high efficient buildings at the first step to make the task more affordable. By exploring and applying the daylight optimization strategies, energy consumption will be reduced in the way that cut down the CO2 emissions and the air pollution. These strategies attempt to turn off the artificial lighting during the useful daylight illuminance and provides a comfortable level for the occupancies. The Daylight passive technique usually categories under three main topics, which are the Sidelighting, Toplighting, and Corelighting. Furthermore, the daylight performance is assessed through different methods, such as daylight factor, daylight autonomy, glare index and the useful daylight illuminance. The method in this study is proposing passive daylight strategies and, testing how the new strategy would contribute to achieving the net-zero status, and validate the results (physical and digital experiments have been conducted to achieve the optimum proposal) to maintain the daylight through the building envelope (shading device, and fenestrations orientation sizes and materials).