A Review of the Evolution of Daylighting Applications and Systems Over Time for Green Buildings

The rational consumption of electricity, especially lighting and its provision in buildings using various strategies, has become an important topic. In recent years, with the increasing the awareness of sustainable development, daylight is seen as an effective way to save the energy, reduce significant pressures on existing energy infrastructure and reduce the environmental impact. The use of daylight in buildings by different sunlight applications/systems, whether traditional or innovative, is more than just an alternative or supplement to electric lighting. Traditional applications are divided into three strategies: general, improving, and developing. The interior spaces of multi-storey buildings (i.e., taller and deeper) are often not illuminated by natural light during the daytime, due to the distance from these spaces to the nearest traditional general application through which daylight must enter. Innovative Daylighting Systems (IDS) or remote source systems have been developed to transmit daylight into the building core (i.e., inaccessible places or rooms) and windowless areas or parts so they can be called Structure Core Daylighting Systems (SCDS). Eighteen SCDS/IDS were reviewed and discussed. The study focused on the systems that had already been commercialized or at least produced a large-scale prototype that had been installed in a real-structure over the past five decades. Although SCDS/IDS are technically powerful enough to provide illumination for remote spaces, there are some important shortcomings that have hampered or prevented their widespread use, such as the extremely high-cost, efficiency for some of them, utilization difficulties, and application limitations.