Effect of occupant behavior on peak cooling and dehumidification loads in typical and high-efficiency homes

Abstract

Residential building codes and voluntary labeling programs are continually increasing the energy efficiency requirements of residential buildings. Improving a building’s thermal enclosure, installing the ductwork in conditioned space, and improving the building’s airtightness results in significant reductions in externally-driven sensible and latent cooling loads. As a building’s efficiency is improved, occupant-related internal gains become a larger portion of the building sensible and latent loads. Additionally, internal gains are highly uncertain compared to other load components. In this study, we use a stochastic approach to simulate occupant-related internal gains and compare the internal gains to other sensible and latent heat sources in four house efficiency levels in 10 U.S. climates using whole-building energy simulation software. We compare the expected range in occupant-related internal gains to other building characteristics such as cooling set point, air infiltration rate, and mechanical ventilation rate. We show that in high-efficiency homes, sensible internal gains vary from less than 10% to greater than 40% of the building sensible load under peak total cooling conditions depending on climate and internal gain profile. Likewise, latent internal gains vary from less than 10% to more than 60% of the building latent load under peak total cooling and peak dehumidification conditions depending on climate and internal gain profile.