Performance of L-shaped Mini Louvers in Tropical Cities in Cooling Energy Reduction: Case Study of Mumbai, Mexico City, and Lagos

Sustainability is one of the biggest issues in green buildings. Many researches are done for finding optimization of building that can be implemented from the design phase to the building operation. One of the strategies to reduce energy is using sun shading devices. This paper shows one possibility of using small L-shaped mini louvers to reduce cooling energy. Rather than using custom devices and advance technologies, this research focuses on simple and widely available materials that can be applied without the needs of specific skills and maintenance. Several L-shaped mini louvers designs as shading device are simulated using computer software to show their performance of reducing cooling energy. The use of a double glass panel window without shading device will be the base case for cooling energy comparison. The simulation will be done in Grasshopper using ladybug and honeybee plugins which have widely used and validated energy simulation engines: EnergyPlus. These shading devices will be simulated in three different cities: Mumbai, Mexico City, and Lagos. The simulation will be done in one-year cycle for eight different orientations. In total, 168 simulations will be analyzed to show the results and draw conclusion of these shading devices. The conclusion shows that L-shaped mini louvers can be used as one of the strategies to achieve more energy-efficient buildings, notably reducing annual cooling energy by 30–32. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.