Economic analysis of the daylight-linked lighting control system in office buildings

The objective of this study is to perform an economic analysis of the daylight-linked automatic on/off lighting control system installed for the purpose of energy savings in office buildings. For this, a building was chosen as a typical example, and the energy cost was calculated by using the daylight and building energy analysis simulation. When the lighting control was utilized, an economic analysis was performed using a payback period that was calculated by comparing the initial cost of installing the lighting control system with the annual energy cost which was reduced thanks to the application of the lighting control.The results showed that the lighting energy consumption, when the lighting control was applied, was reduced by an average of 30.5% compared with the case that there was not lighting control applied. Also, the result for total energy consumption showed that, when lighting control was applied, this was reduced by 8.5% when the glazing ratio was 100%, 8.2% for 80%, and 7.6% for 60% when compared to non-application. The payback period was analyzed in terms of the number of floors in a building; 10 floors, 20 floors, 30 floors, and 40 floors. Hence, the building with 40 floors and glazing ratio 100% resulted in the shortest payback period of 8.8 years, the building with 10 floors and glazing ratio 60% resulted in the longest period of 12.7 years. In other words, the larger the glazing ratio and the number of building floors are, the shorter the payback period is.