Comfort Enhancement and Energy Saving through Behavioral Change of Energy Users

This scientific paper analyses several European buildings such as schools, office buildings, healthcare centres and residential buildings to quantify the potential on comfort enhancement and energy saving through behavioral change of building users towards energy efficiency.

Buildings account for 40% of overall energy consumption in the European Union. Energy related to occupant behaviour is identified as one of the major factors influencing building energy consumption.

The authors of this paper have analyzed 10 real buildings located in Spain, UK and Romania,to quantify the potential on comfort enhancement and energy saving through behavioral change of building users towards energy efficiency. In this line, the most promising users' behaviors changes have been identified.

Measurements on energy consumption, indoor conditions, outdoor conditions and other parameters such as occupancy or windows opening have been collected in the 10 buildings to estimate the energy saving potential by changing energy target behaviors related to the use of HVAC systems, appliances and lightings. In addition, the number of hours with no comfort conditions in occupied rooms due to CO₂ levels, temperature, relative humidity and luminance were estimated in order to evaluate comfort enhancement potential. The paper explains the objective, need and methodology of the study, the monitoring data collected, the analysis to quantify energy saving and comfort enhancement potential, the results and the conclusions.

The study identifies comfort enhancement potential and energy-saving potential based on changing the behaviour of building users. The results show that the office building could have saved up to EUR 2500 in energy during the study period while the healthcare centres could have saved more than EUR 1000. The highest energy saving potential is related to the use of the Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) system. It has also been found out that there is a potential to improve comfort conditions in all the pilot buildings. The highest potential on comfort is identified in the improvement of the luminance conditions.

Authors and citation:

Calleja-Rodríguez, G.; Peralta-Escalante, J.J.; Jiménez-Redondo, N.; Márquez-Pocostales, F.J.; Anghelita, P. Potential on Comfort Enhancement and Energy Saving through Behavioral Change of Energy Users in Real European Buildings. Proceedings 2020, 65, https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings202006500

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