Publications / 2015 Proceedings of the 32nd ISARC, Oulu, Finland

Impact of Building Occupancy on Assessing the Effectiveness of Energy Conservation Measures

Nan Li, Zheng Yang, Chao Tang, Nanlin Chen, Burcin Becerik-Gerber
Pages 1-6 (2015 Proceedings of the 32nd ISARC, Oulu, Finland, ISBN 978-951-758-597-2, ISSN 2413-5844)
Abstract:

Assessing the effectiveness of energy conservation measures (ECMs) before their actual implementation in buildings is critical. It has become the mainstream to employ calibrated building energy models to quantify expected energy savings from ECMs and justify their application. However, there is empirical evidence that reveals noticeable discrepancies between simulated and measured performance of the ECMs. One possible reason for such discrepancies is that actual building occupancy, which is a critical factor that determines the total and peak loads of building systems and related energy consumption, is not represented in most energy models. This paper examines the impact of building occupancy on the assessment of ECMs. Two energy models of an office building were built and calibrated with the same audit data following the same procedure, except that one used assumed occupancy and the other used actual occupancy. Both models were used to assess an ECM, which adjusts indoor air temperature set points by responding to real-time occupancy. Noticeable difference was observed in the energy savings reportedly respectively by the two models. The results highlighted the importance of integrating actual occupancy in the assessment of ECMs.

Keywords: Energy conservation measure, Building energy simulation, Energy model, Occupancy, Calibration