Estimation of Building Thermal Performance using Simple Sensors and Air Conditioners

Yuiko Sakuma and Hiroaki Nishi
Additional contact information
Yuiko Sakuma: Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan
Hiroaki Nishi: Department of System Design Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 15, 1-22

Abstract: Energy and environmental problems have attracted attention worldwide. Energy consumption in residential sectors accounts for a large percentage of total consumption. Several retrofit schemes, which insulate building envelopes to increase energy efficiency, have been adapted to address residential energy problems. However, these schemes often fail to balance the installment cost with savings from the retrofits. To maximize the benefit, selecting houses with low thermal performance by a cost-effective method is inevitable. Therefore, an accurate, low-cost, and undemanding housing assessment method is required. This paper proposes a thermal performance assessment method for residential housing. The proposed method enables assessments under the existing conditions of residential housings and only requires a simple and affordable monitoring system of power meters for an air conditioner (AC), simple sensors (three thermometers at most), a BLE beacon, and smartphone application. The proposed method is evaluated thoroughly by using both simulation and experimental data. Analysis of estimation errors is also conducted. Our method shows that the accuracy achieved with the proposed three-room model is 9.8% (relative error) for the simulation data. Assessments on the experimental data also show that our proposed method achieved Ua value estimations using a low-cost system, satisfying the requirements of housing assessments for retrofits.

Keywords: building thermal performance assessment; Ua -value; system identification; performance gap; smart home; house energy management system (HEMS) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/15/2950/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/15/2950/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:15:p:2950-:d:253581

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().