Research on air-conditioning usage behaviour in offices with different occupancy

¹ School of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University, China.
² Sino-German College of Applied Sciences, Tongji University, China.

^* Corresponding author: yiqunpan@tongji.edu.cn

Abstract

Occupant behaviours in the buildings are not only random and uncertain but also related to each occupant’s habitual preference. This leads to the performance gap between actual and expected energy consumption in buildings. Therefore, accurate information and modelling with regard to occupant behaviour are important for reliable energy simulation and energy-saving optimization design. Existing studies on occupant behaviour models in office space usually focus on single-person offices or full-floor buildings, without considering the behavioural differences among offices with different occupancy. Therefore, this study established the air-conditioning usage behaviour models in offices with different occupancy based on questionnaires and measured data. The results show that occupant compromise and clustering effect will increase with the increase of occupancy. Using the established models as input, this study compared the simulation results with that under the standard schedule. The difference rate is as high as 32.19% in winter and 13.07% in the whole year. And for areas with high energy consumption in winter, the gap may be bigger.