Estimating the influence of occupant behavior on building heating and cooling energy in one simulation run

Isabella Gaetani, Pieter-Jan Hoes and Jan L.M. Hensen

Applied Energy, 2018, vol. 223, issue C, 159-171

Abstract: Energy performance contracting (EPC) aims at guaranteeing a specified level of energy savings in the built environment for a client. Among the building energy performance uncertainties that hinder EPC, occupant behavior (OB) plays a major role. For this reason, energy service companies (ESCOs) may be interested in including OB-related clauses in their contracts. The inclusion of such a clause calls for an efficient, easy-to-implement method to provide a first estimate of the potential effect of various aspects of OB on building cooling and heating energy demand. In contrast with common sensitivity analysis approaches based on a high number of scenarios, a novel simulation method requiring only a single simulation run for both heating and cooling seasons is presented here. The estimate is provided by evaluating the newly developed impact indices (II) based on the results obtained by means of the simulation run. A set of 16 building variants differing in floor height, climate, construction vintage and equipment and lighting power density was investigated to test the method. All II were calculated for the 16 building variants. In order to verify their significance, the results of a one-at-a-time sensitivity analysis mimicking simplified variations in occupant behavior (OB) were plotted against the II. The R2 values were above 0.9 when evaluating the effect of equipment use, lights use, and occupant presence, confirming the significance of the developed II. For blind use and temperature setpoint setting, the R2 values were ca. 0.85. Subsequently, the method was applied to an existing office building in Delft, The Netherlands, to evaluate its potential for EPC. This study confirms the high variability of the effect of OB on heating and cooling energy demand according to the case at hand. The developed method is useful for practitioners to evaluate the potential effect of OB on a given design in a time-effective manner.

Keywords: Occupant behavior; Building performance simulation; Impact indices; Energy performance contracting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191830446X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:223:y:2018:i:c:p:159-171

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.03.108

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().