Passive House sensor networks: Human centric thermal comfort concept

Abstract

The focus of this work lies on analysing Passive House (PH) requirement from human comfort perspective. The investigation will lead into plans for utilising Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) as an enabling tool in human comfort solution. WSNs are used as cooperative smart objects that closely monitor living space's environmental comfort (thermal comfort, visual comfort, indoor air comfort, acoustical comfort and spatial comfort), user preferences and energy consumption, manipulating appropriate Environmental Factors and Physiological Factors towards improving human comfort without sacrificing energy needs of a Passive House. The work concentrates on determining the thermal comfort of a living space where mobile node (occupant) and static nodes (environment) work together in calculating thermal comfort Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) value. This paper presents Java based SunSPOT sensor node, embedded with sensing engine and PMV engine to determine thermal comfort of a living space. We also present interpolation based PMV engine that will be used to determine thermal comfort where no sensor present. The experiment and simulation results indicate that the proposed engines exhibit a great potential in providing solution for PH activity.