Effective daylighting design hurdles challenges

Effective daylighting design must hurdle a number of challenges and variables to provide the benefits sought by building developers, owners and tenants.

"One challenge is that high-performance daylighting is not sunlight," said Michael Basch, president and CEO of Ciralight, a leading manufacturer of high-performance daylighting systems. "It's diffuse light that optimizes illumination of work surfaces for the benefit of building occupants."

Another is that daylight continuously changes throughout the day and varies by geography and building design. The range of daylight conditions that require effective management is as broad as the horizon.

Proper daylighting design is worth the effort, however. It can influence visual aesthetics, the environmental quality of interior spaces and energy costs.

High-performance daylighting systems, such as the Ciralight SunTrackerOne, solve the challenges of diffusing daylight and maintaining high illumination levels as the sun's orientation changes.

Other challenges include balancing light levels from two light sources-daylighting and electric lighting. Automated lighting control systems balance the sources by dimming or even turning off electric lighting when daylight is strongest. This maintains even illumination of work surfaces and conserves considerable energy.

A Department of Energy report said, "When properly designed and effectively integrated with electric lighting, daylighting can offer significant energy savings by offsetting a portion of the electric lighting load." Energy consumption of fluorescent lighting, for example, can drop as much as 75 percent when it operates in conjunction with daylighting.

Maintaining the quality of light is critical as well. Electric lighting ought to mimic the quality of daylighting so people do not perceive a difference as illumination shifts from one source to another. Lamps with a high color rendering index and color temperature match well with daylight.

Another variable is illumination level. Daylighting, overhead electric lighting and task lighting determine overall light levels. How much light is enough? Because high-performance daylighting systems, such as SunTrackerOne, require no electricity, light levels can increase beyond the minimums that are included in lighting design standards, without corresponding increases in electric consumption. Lumen power density restrictions also become less of an issue.

High-performance daylighting systems also enable designers and architects to surmount such variables as keeping solar gain out of interior spaces and minimizing thermal loss in winter.

For more information on high-performance daylighting systems and daylighting design, call 877-645-2728, or visit www.ciralight.com.

Ciralight of Park City, Utah is responsible for the manufacture, sales, marketing, installation and technical support of the high-performance SunTrackerOne Daylighting System. The company serves the retail, warehousing, manufacturing, institutional and commercial markets worldwide. It is an innovative leader in daylighting technology and continues to push the boundaries of daylighting systems.