| An installed passive louver shading systems can affect the heating, cooling, and lighting loads of any building, by altering the amount of solar energy, in the form of light and heat, from entering. The benefits of a louver system are derived from the application of solar geometry incident on the site and the climate within the area. By optimizing a passive louver system's design parameters, a building can reduce the total annual energy consumption due to artificial heating, cooling loads and artificial lighting.;This research has implemented simulation modeling software, Energy Plus, to predict the effect of passive louver shades across a standard year on a home within the Midwest part of the country. This energy model of the building has been validated against actual experimental data, over the course of six months. This research has optimized a passive louver shading array, unique to this latitude, by generating converging simulations to track energy demands of the heating and cooling systems of the home. The optimized array characteristics are derived from the minimization of the overall energy performance of these systems.;The simulations of each of the combinations of variable configurations were compiled to outline the energy reduction due to a set louvers installed on a residence. The louver configuration that performed that best was a depth of 6 inches, a height of 8 inches, an offset of 0 inches, and a width of 4 inches. This louver configuration reduced the energy consumption of the model house 17% compared to the same house model without a louver array. All of the simulation outputs were compiled to create the Louver Configuration Input Program, to allow a user to input continuous values within the range of variable and be output an estimate of energy loading. |
