A simulation approach to determine a visual comfort index including daylight for adequate building performance evaluation

Building performance evaluation requires accepted standards for comparison. Thermal comfort conditions are widely accepted. This is different for lighting issues: currently set standards are far from describing user comfort sensations. Since both natural and artificial lighting have significant impact on the total energy demand, future building performance evaluation will need to take this into account. Inclusion of daylight as an extremely variable light source makes it virtually impossible to perform subjective tests under reproducable test conditions. Therefore, a computer simulated environment has been set up that: gives an extremely natural picture of reality. The. proposed method, its significance for building performance evaluation, and the experimental set-up is described.