Be active and consume less—the effect of venetian blind use patterns on energy consumption in single-family houses

The purpose of this work is to improve the understanding of the role of venetian blinds as a part of a building energy system. This is valuable for both designing automatic control of blinds and advising occupants towards energy-efficient use of manual blinds. A new strategy to control venetian blinds developed in the work aims at minimizing energy consumption by controlling blinds in a way that takes into account not only the effect of blinds on both solar transmission but also the effect on heat loss through windows. Annual computer simulations were performed to calculate the effect of blind use patterns on heating, cooling and lighting demand in four European climates in three single-family houses. The results show that the use patterns of blinds have a significant effect on energy consumption and that the new control strategy leads to lowest total energy consumption in all of the simulated buildings in all four climates. In contrast, a completely passive strategy—although very common in reality—consumes the most; depending on the climate and window size, total consumption is highest either when the blinds remain continually lowered and closed or continually raised. Occupants should be advised about the potential to save energy by changing blind use behaviours, also in the heating season.