Francesco Anselmo
Dipartimento di Ricerche Energetiche ed Ambientali
Università di Palermo / Italy
The prediction of the utilisation potential
of solar energy for both passive and active applications is usually based on
tabular or analytical methods that use averaged irradiation data.
These methods allow the user to get results
only at specific points and are nearly useless when applied to urban sites,
since the complexity of urban geometries and inter-reflection and shadowing
effects cannot be accounted for easily.
Recently, some Radiance based procedures have
been proposed in order to obtain high dynamic range (HDR) images capable of
quantifying solar access reliably and taking into account sky anisotropy,
inter-reflection and shadowing phenomena and hourly or sub-hourly sequences of
irradiance/irradiation data.
For this purpose, a Radiance based software
package has been developed by the authors and applied to a real case of urban
planning in Palma di Montechiaro, a historical town located in Sicily (Italy),
in order to estimate photovoltaics and solar heating systems economics.
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Francesco Anselmo
Dipartimento di Ricerche Energetiche ed
Ambientali Università di Palermo / Italy
Blender is a freely available and open source
3D modeling and animation software (http://www.blender.org).
The authors have developed a Blender module
to export geometries, materials and luminaires both as static scenes or as
animated sequences and render them with Radiance.
The graphical interface module includes
library facilities, weather data input management and analysis tools and aims
at providing a complete interface to manage Radiance projects and
natural/artificial lighting simulation within a 3d environment.