Enhancing Non-intrusive Occupant Load Monitoring through Occupancy Matrix

Abstract

It has been universally accepted that energy consumption in commercial buildings is highly related to occupant behaviors. Improving occupants’ energy-use behaviors is regarded as the most cost-effective approach to enhance overall energy saving in commercial built environments. However, effective behavior intervention pursuits rely on the availability of occupant-specific energy-use information, which is extremely expensive to capture with existing technologies. In this context, the author’s previous studies proposed the non-intrusive occupant load monitoring (NIOLM) approach that captures individual occupants’ energy-consuming information at their entry and departure events in an economically feasible manner. The NIOLM assigns energy-load variations (ev) of a building to individual occupants and relies on two variables: Time delay intervals and magnitudes of ev. This paper extends the existing NIOLM concept with the inclusion of a new variable, the occupancy matrix which manifests the information of present occupants at the moment of ev. An experiment has been conducted in an office space to validate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed approach. Outcomes of this research could be a great help for studies on occupant energy-use behaviors intervention and simulation.