How do illuminance map work for different rooms under same thermal zone ?

openstudio
radiance
retag add tags

Hi guys, I have started to work on Open Studios with Radiance. The building I am modelling is the Queens Building in the University if Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom. I cannot upload a picture so maybe if you type in Queens Building on Google map you might understand the scale of the project. I was in the process of placing the illuminance maps on the first floor when it hit me that it may not be possible to put the different illuminance map under the same thermal zone.

So for example if I have 6 mechanical rooms, all of them under thermal zone 1, would it be possible to have different illuminance map for each mechanical room ? It should be noted that the rooms are located all around the building. Same thing for the glare sensor and the daylighting controls. Is it possible to have different illuminance maps for different rooms where the rooms are all in the same thermal zone.

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to be pretty descriptive so that there are no misunderstandings.

Kind regards, Rafid Khan

265

RMAK

asked 2014-11-11 18:51:31 -0500

edit flag offensive 0 remove flag close merge delete

Comments

So, have you implemented that? I still see only one field for illuminance map in zone settings, i.e. one zone may have only one map, right?

Dinosaver (2016-05-30 07:01:44 -0500) edit

This is not an answer. Please add it as a comment.

Adam Hilton (2016-05-31 08:13:37 -0500) edit

add a comment see more comments

Hi Rafid, Great question, and thanks for the details! You have hit on one of the big limitations of the current implementation of Radiance in OpenStudio: multiple spaces' illuminance maps are not supported in a single thermal zone. This is obviously lame, and we are planning to fix this in a future release.

All is not lost, however; you can still use the basic Radiance tools in OpenStudio to look at the daylight distribution across the building and determine some general lighting savings potential. You could for example have one space's illuminance map span multiple spaces, and view the spatial daylight distribution. How different is the electric lighting across the spaces? I ask because you could also scale one space's lighting loads to cover a whole thermal zone, model the daylighting in one space, and get some general information about what the daylighting might do that way.