Abstract
Accurate simulation and prediction of occupants’ energy use behavior are crucial in building energy consumption research. However, few studies have focused on household energy use behavior in severely cold regions that have unique energy use patterns because of the low demand of cooling in summer and the use of central heating system in winter. Thus, we developed an agent-based model to simulate the household electricity use behavior in severely cold regions, according to data for Harbin, China. The model regards apartments, residents, household appliances, and energy-management departments as agents and generates the household electricity consumption with respect to time, temperature, and energy-saving events. The simulation parameters include basic information of the residents, their energy-saving awareness, their appliance use behaviors, and the impact of energy-saving management. Electricity use patterns are described by decision-making mechanisms and probabilities obtained through a questionnaire survey. In the end, the energy-saving effects of different management strategies are evaluated. The results indicate that the model can visually present and accurately predict the dynamic energy use behavior of residents. The energy-saving potential of household electricity use in severely cold regions is mainly concentrated in lighting and standby waste, rather than cooling and heating, since the cooling demand in summer is low and the heating in winter mainly relies on central heating system of the city, not on household electricity appliances. Energy-saving promotion can significantly reduce the amount of energy waste (41.89% of lighting and 97.79% of standby energy consumption), and the best frequency of promotional events is once every four months. Residents prefer incentive policies, in which energy-saving effect is 57.7% larger than that of increasing electricity prices. This study realized the re-presentation of the changes of energy consumption in a large number of households and highlighted the particularity of household energy-saving potential in severely cold regions. The proposed model has a simple structure and high output accuracy; it can help cities in severely cold regions formulate energy-saving management policies and evaluate their effects.
Highlights
The energy use behavior of occupants is an important factor affecting the overall energy consumption of buildings [1,2,3,4,5]
Based on the review of existing research, we found that there are two gaps in the research regarding to energy use behavior: (1) Household energy use in severely cold regions is affected by special climatic conditions and has its particularity, but there are very few discussions on energy use behavior in severely cold regions; and (2) the discussion on household energy use behavior focuses on the simulation of a single family, while there are few research on energy use behavior of a large number of individual households on the urban scale
Energy use behavior is the main cause of fluctuations in building energy consumption
Summary
The energy use behavior of occupants is an important factor affecting the overall energy consumption of buildings [1,2,3,4,5]. Energies 2020, 13, 5581 energy use behavior. Because of its subjectivity and randomness, energy use behavior has always been regarded as a source of uncertainty in simulations and predictions of building energy consumption [8] and has been the main reason for differences between the simulation results and the actual situation [9,10,11,12]. A simplified and fixed energy behavior schedule can lead to simulation results >2 times smaller than the actual energy consumption [6,7,12]. A better understanding of occupants’ energy use behaviors and their interactions with buildings will help to improve the accuracy of the model [12,13]
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