Linking building energy consumption with occupants’ energy-consuming behaviors in commercial buildings: Non-intrusive occupant load monitoring (NIOLM)

Abstract

Occupants’ energy-consuming behaviors have a significant influence on overall energy consumption in commercial buildings. Accordingly, understanding and intervening in these behaviors offers a significant opportunity for energy savings in commercial buildings. Current approaches to behavior modification rely on available occupant-specific energy consumption data, but capturing such data is generally expensive. One possible solution to this challenge is to link energy consumption to individual occupants’ energy-use behaviors in commercial buildings. In this context, this study proposes a non-intrusive occupant load monitoring (NIOLM) approach that couples occupancy-sensing data—captured from existing Wi-Fi infrastructures—with power changes in aggregate building-wide energy data to thereby disaggregate building-wide data down to the individual. This paper describes two case studies that investigate the feasibility of using the NIOLM approach to identify occupant-specific energy consumption information. Tracking eleven occupants’ energy-use behaviors using NIOLM over a four-month period resulted in an average F-measure of 0.778 and Accuracy of 0.955. The case studies thereby demonstrated that NIOLM successfully tracks individual occupants’ energy-consuming behaviors at minimal cost by utilizing existing high-resolution metering devices and Wi-Fi network infrastructures in commercial buildings.