Air conditioning control using self-powered sensor considering comfort level and occupant location

Abstract

In this paper, an effective low-cost heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) control system incorporating a new sensor is proposed. This research builds upon our previous system, which achieved efficient control of the air conditioning (AC) for a large room in a library. By detecting whether or not individual chairs were occupied and regulating the AC near unoccupied chairs, the system reduced the overall power consumption. This detection was achieved using pressure sensors installed in the chairs. However, the sensors required battery power to measure voltage and transmit data. The batteries needed to be replaced within several months, and thus the system required frequent maintenance. In this paper, we introduce a self-powered sensor. The sensor integrates an energy-harvesting switch and a wireless transmitter. The action of pressing or releasing the switch generates sufficient electricity to power the device, and this enables long-term operation without replacing or charging the batteries. When these sensors are integrated into chairs, occupancy status can be detected without additional power or regular maintenance. The proposed improved system with battery-free chair sensors is evaluated in an eight-day experiment conducted at a library in Kurihara, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The energy efficiency evaluation indicates that the proposed system can reduce electricity consumption by 18.3%. The predicted mean vote (PMV) values for the environment in the library are determined to assess the comfort level, and these values confirm that the proposed system is capable of maintaining occupant comfort. In the experiment, wireless sensor network is built through the Library to the Laboratory. All sensing data (e.g. temperature, humidity occupancy, status, power consumption, air conditioning status) are managed on the Cloud.