The Optimization of Visual Comfort and Energy Consumption Induced by Natural Light Based on PSO

This paper presents the “model construction method”, an optimization method and industrial internet of things (IIoT) technology that is proposed for nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB), providing a comfortable visual environment by only utilizing natural light while improving its induced indoor air conditioner energy consumption (ACEC). The incident light is sampled by light sensors, and this data is sent to the cloud server. The visual comfort and indoor ACEC, both of which are induced by incident light, are combined as the optimization objective, and the area of windows covered by curtains is used as the optimal parameter in the particle swarm optimization (PSO). The visual comfort and indoor ACEC induced by incident light are modeled, and the construction method is independent of the geographical location. Five modes are defined for applications with different purposes, the performance of which are investigated and compared carefully. The result shows that natural light could provide comfortable visual comfort, while the ACEC induced by it could be reduced effectively.