An Empirical Study of Influencing Factors on Residential Building Energy Consumption in Qingdao City, China

Abstract

Abstract Residential building sector is one of the major contributors to global electricity energy consumption. Current researches have demonstrated that the residential building energy consumption is determined by many factors, including climate conditions, household and building characteristics, and occupant behavior. However, the extent to which each factor contributes to the total energy consumption has remained unclear, especially in developing countries such as China. To partially answer this question, an empirical study was conducted in five residential real estates in Qingdao city. Questionnaires were distributed to around 500 families, whose electricity consumption from Feb to Aug, 2015 was then collected from local electricity bureaus. Based on the collected data, correlation analysis was performed to exploit the relative role of each factors. Results reveal that occupant behavior is the most important parameter on cooling energy use, compared with household characteristics and urban geometry.