Abstract
Buildings currently account for 30–40 percent of total global energy consumption. In particular, commercial buildings are responsible for about 12 percent of global energy use and 21 percent of the United States’ energy use, and the energy demand of this sector continues to grow faster than other sectors. This increasing rate therefore raises a critical concern about improving the energy performance of commercial buildings. Recently, researchers have investigated ways in which understanding and improving occupants’ energy-consuming behaviors could function as a cost-effective approach to decreasing commercial buildings’ energy demands. The objective of this paper is to present a detailed, up-to-date review of various algorithms, models, and techniques employed in the pursuit of understanding and improving occupants’ energy-use behaviors in commercial buildings. Previous related studies are introduced and three main approaches are identified: (1) monitoring occupant-specific energy consumption; (2) Simulating occupant energy consumption behavior; and (3) improving occupant energy consumption behavior. The first approach employs intrusive and non-intrusive load-monitoring techniques to estimate the energy use of individual occupants. The second approach models diverse characteristics related to occupants’ energy-consuming behaviors in order to assess and predict such characteristics’ impacts on the energy performance of commercial buildings; this approach mostly utilizes agent-based modeling techniques to simulate actions and interactions between occupants and their built environment. The third approach employs occupancy-focused interventions to change occupants’ energy-use characteristics. Based on the detailed review of each approach, critical issues and current gaps in knowledge in the existing literature are discussed, and directions for future research opportunities in this field are provided.
Highlights
The world’s growing energy use raises concerns about energy consumption and its impacts, in terms of resource consumption and environmental degradation
The energy demands of the commercial sector currently has an increasing rate of 2.9 percent and continues to grow faster than other major sectors: industry, residential buildings, and transportation [3,10]. Such energy use intensity and its increasing rate raise a critical concern about improving the energy performance of commercial buildings, which has brought about a greater emphasis on the importance of maximizing energy savings during the operational phase
The logical length for feedback studies seems to be between two to four months. As mentioned, these studies indicate that occupants typically control less than 10 percent of total energy use in commercial buildings [148,149]—Table 1 shows that feedback research has led to energy savings of less than 10 percent, which could confirm that occupants control less than 10 percent of overall energy consumption
Summary
The world’s growing energy use raises concerns about energy consumption and its impacts, in terms of resource consumption and environmental degradation. Residential and commercial buildings share 40 percent of this total global energy consumption [3] and are responsible for a similar percentage of CO2 emissions [4,5] Such facts are visible in the United States and European Union, where total energy-use in built environments is more pronounced than in other major energy end-use sectors—e.g., industry and transportation [2,3]. Contributing to this rising building energy use are population growth, increasing demand for maintaining a comfortable environment, and increasing time spent inside of buildings [2]. Such energy use intensity and its increasing rate raise a critical concern about improving the energy performance of commercial buildings, which has brought about a greater emphasis on the importance of maximizing energy savings during the operational phase
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