Work

The impact of occupants' behaviour on building energy demand

Year: 2011

Type: article

Abstract: Using extensive field survey data acquired over the past 8 years at the Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory at EPFL in Switzerland, comprehensive models of occupants' presence, opening and closing of windows and the raising and lowering of blinds have been developed. These new models have been integrated within a new urban energy modelling tool, called CitySim. In this article, we describe briefly the structure of CitySim together with the means for representing occupants' presence and behaviour, both deterministic and stochastic. For a hypothetical scenario, we then go on to present results from simulations of the impact that occupants' behaviour may have on the indoor environment in buildings as well as on buildings' energy demands. From this we conclude that occupants' behaviour has a significant impact (of the order of a factor of two) on buildings' energy demands and that individuals' diversity has a yet greater impact.

Source: Journal of Building Performance Simulation

DOI: 10.1080/19401493.2011.558213

Authors: Frédéric Haldi, Darren Robinson

Institution: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Language: English

Topic: Building Energy and Comfort Optimization

Subfield: Building and Construction

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Sustainable cities and communities, Affordable and clean energy, Climate action

Open Access status: green

Funder: European Commission