Measurement-Based Assessment of Energy Performance and Thermal Comfort in Households Under Non-Controllable Conditions

George M. Stavrakakis, Dimitris Bakirtzis, Dimitrios Tziritas, Panagiotis L. Zervas, Emmanuel Fotakis, Sofia Yfanti, Nikolaos Savvakis and Dimitris A. Katsaprakakis ()
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George M. Stavrakakis: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hellenic Mediterranean University, GR-71410 Heraklion, Greece
Dimitris Bakirtzis: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hellenic Mediterranean University, GR-71410 Heraklion, Greece
Dimitrios Tziritas: MES Energy SA, 67 Aeolou Street, GR-10559 Athens, Greece
Panagiotis L. Zervas: MES Energy SA, 67 Aeolou Street, GR-10559 Athens, Greece
Emmanuel Fotakis: Department of Environment, Division of Agricultural Development, Environment and Trade, Municipality of Heraklion, GR-71601 Heraklion, Greece
Sofia Yfanti: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hellenic Mediterranean University, GR-71410 Heraklion, Greece
Nikolaos Savvakis: School of Production Engineering and Management, Technical University of Crete, GR-73100 Chania, Greece
Dimitris A. Katsaprakakis: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hellenic Mediterranean University, GR-71410 Heraklion, Greece

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 5, 1-32

Abstract: The current research presents a practical approach to assess energy performance and thermal comfort in households through monitoring campaigns. The campaigns are conducted in a Greek city, involving the installation of low-intrusive recording devices for hourly electricity consumption, indoor temperature, and relative humidity in different residences in winter and summer periods. The recorded indoor environmental conditions are initially compiled to the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) index, followed by the formulation of databases of hourly electricity consumption, PMV and local outdoor climate conditions retrieved by an official source of meteorological conditions. A special algorithm for database processing was developed which takes into account the eligibility of data series, i.e., only the ones corresponding to non-zero electricity consumption are treated as eligible. First, the sequential temporal progress of energy consumption and thermal comfort is produced towards the assessment of energy-use intensity and thermal comfort patterns. Secondly, through summing of the electricity consumption within 0.5-step PMV intervals, under three outdoor temperature intervals with approximately the same number of eligible measurements, reliable interrelations of energy consumption and PMV are obtained even for residences with limited amount of measured data. It is revealed that the weekly electricity consumption ranged within 0.15–3.59 kWh/m 2 for the winter cases and within 0.29–1.72 kWh/m 2 for the summer cases. The acceptable range of −1 ≤ PMV ≤ 1 interval holds an occurrence frequency from 69.46% to 93.39% and from 37.94% to 70.31% for the winter and summer examined cases, respectively. Less resistance to discomfort conditions is observed at most of the summer examined households exhibiting the electricity peak within the 1 ≤ PMV ≤ 1.5 interval, contrary to the winter cases for which the electricity peak occurred within the −1 ≤ PMV ≤ −0.5 interval. The study provides graphical relationships of PMV and electricity consumption under various outdoor temperatures paving the way for correlating thermal comfort and energy consumption.

Keywords: building energy efficiency; thermal comfort; residences; monitoring; rational use of energy (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: 2025
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