Light and thermal management of the semi-transparent radiative cooling glass for buildings

Abstract Transparent envelopes account for a large amount of energy consumption of buildings, especially in hot climate regions. Glass is one of the main materials in transparent envelopes, so modifying the radiative properties of the glass is an alternative way for building energy saving. Here, a semi-transparent radiative cooling (ST/RC) glass was proposed by integrating the selective utilization of solar energy and passive radiative cooling. Comparative experiments based on two small-scale boxes were performed, which shows that the indoor air temperature of the box with the ST/RC glass is lower than that with the ordinary glass and the maximum temperature difference reached 16.4 °C, indicating that ST/RC glass can reduce the waste heat generated in the indoor environment. Besides, the daylighting level with the ST/RC glass is decreased by approximately 2/3 to support comfortable daylighting. Moreover, large-scale modeling of the building located in the Maldives was conducted and results show that the energy consumption of building could be saved by 21%–66.5% when the glass is modified to transmit visible light, reflect other solar irradiance, and emit like a blackbody, which indicates that the strategy of using light and thermal management of glass has the potential to reduce the energy consumption of buildings.