Proceedings of the 2014 Winter Simulation Conference A. Tolk, S. Y. Diallo, I. O. Ryzhov, L. Yilmaz, S. Buckley, and J. A. Miller, eds. ENERGY AND INDOOR COMFORT ANALYSIS OF VARIOUS WINDOW-SHADING ASSEMBLIES INA HOT AND HUMID CLIMATE Adeeba Abdul Raheem Raja R. A. Issa Svetlana Olbina M.E. Rinker School of Construction Management, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA ABSTRACT Commercial buildings consume nearly 20% of all energy used in the United States, costing more than $200 billion each year. The building envelope plays a key role in determining how much energy is required for the operation of a building. Individual thermal and solar properties of glazing and shading systems only provide information based on static evaluations, but it is very important to assess the efficiency of these systems as a whole assembly under the site specific conditions. With an ever increasing cooling energy demand of buildings in hot and humid climates like in Florida, using a well- designed window-shading system is considered as an efficient strategy that minimizes the direct sunlight reaching indoors and thus reduces the overall energy loads. While reduction in energy loads is important, the indoor comfort of occupants should not be compromised. This research was conducted to analyze the indoor thermal and visual performance of various window-shading assemblies that were selected after their energy performance evaluation. 1 INTRODUCTION Florida has become the nation’s fourth largest commercial energy consuming state utilizing about a thousand trillion BTU’s in commercial consumption and having a gross expenditure of over ten billion dollars per year in this sector (EIA 2010). Of the total energy that Florida produces per year, more than 90% comes from non–renewable sources like coal and gas contributing 4.8 million metric tons of energy related carbon-dioxide emissions from the commercial sector to the total emissions per year. In an effort to decrease the carbon footprint of this high commercial energy consumption, more stringent rules have been defined for envelope design in Florida Building Code Energy Conservation (FBC 2010). Much of the emphasis is given to the window to wall ratio, U-factor and solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) of window glass and frame type while describing the energy efficient window strategies in section 502 (Building envelope requirements) of FBC 2010. Though there is a great potential for the advanced window systems such as switchable electrochromic or gasochromic windows in reducing the overall energy loads, still widespread use is unlikely to occur in the near future due to high initial cost and lack of technical expertise. Hence other related options such as automated shading systems could be deployed while still satisfying the thermal and daylighting requirements of the occupants. 3200 978-1-4799-7486-3/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE