Solar control

In modern office buildings, maximum priority is given to planning certainty for high-quality working conditions, coupled with low operating costs and low energy consumption. This objective can only be attained if regulation of facade systems and direction-dependent solar irradiation are taken into account when planning the building. Nevertheless, the sensitivity of the utilised systems towards different control strategies or user interventions is frequently neglected. For example, the lowest values and luminances of closed venetian blinds that can be achieved are still used very often to select the facade (or to characterise it in the tender) - while ignoring the fact that the user does not actually keep the system permanently closed because he/she wants to be able to look outside. Planners create huge planning risks if they do not consider the future use of the systems in an early stage of the planning process. An important quality characteristic of facade systems is the "robustness" against so-called "faulty operation". In this paper, we describe our methodology, which has been used to assess the performance of facade systems for many high-rise buildings.