Impact of Heating Control Strategy and Occupant Behavior on the Energy Consumption in a Building with Natural Ventilation in Poland

Aniela Kaminska

doi:10.3390/en12224304

Abstract

This study aims to provide an experimental assessment of energy consumption in an existing public building in Poland, in order to analyze the impact of occupant behavior on that consumption. The building is naturally ventilated and the occupants have the freedom to change the temperature set point and open or close the windows. The energy consumption is calculated and the calculation results are compared with the experimental data. An analysis of occupants’ behavior has revealed that they choose temperature set points in a wide range recognized as thermal comfort, and window opening is accidental and difficult to predict. The implemented heating control algorithms take into account the strong influence of individual occupant preferences on the feeling of comfort. The energy consumption assessment has revealed that the lowering of temperature set point by 1 °C results in an energy saving of about 5%. Comparisons of energy consumption with heating control and without any controls showed that the potential for energy reduction due to heating control reached approximately 10%. The use of windows control, which allows to turn off the heating after opening the window and its impact on energy savings have been discussed as well.

Highlights

The global building sector has been the main consumer of world energy [1]
The main purpose of the work is to determine the impact of window opening and the range of temperature set point chosen by the users on energy consumption
Experimental verification of the building case study showed that the calculation of energy consumption in a cold climate including the heat transfer through the building envelope and heat losses for ventilation were sufficiently accurate

Summary

Introduction

The global building sector has been the main consumer of world energy [1]. Despite the large number of building retrofit technologies [6] and the management of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, the implementation of these recommendations is a difficult and costly challenge. In making any decisions regarding the modernization of a building, estimating energy consumption in the building is of key importance. This consumption is influenced by many factors such as ambient weather conditions, building structure and characteristics, the operation of HVAC systems and occupancy. An overview of measures and policies adopted by different countries, allowing the monitoring, management and reduction of energy consumption in buildings is given in [8]. The energy consumption related to HVAC systems in different types of buildings (office, commercial and residential) is analyzed in [9]

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