Implementation of Occupant-based Control in Typical Academic Buildings.

Buildings consume approximately 40% of total energy consumption in the U.S., thus there is significant motivation to make buildings more efficient. Existing studies have implemented a range of control strategies to save energy in typical commercial buildings. However, academic buildings at universities can vary substantially from typical office buildings in their space use, occupancy patterns and energy use. This paper aims to evaluate the energy savings potential of implementing occupant-based control (OBC) for HVAC systems in typical academic buildings using the energy simulation engine EnergyPlus. A U.S. DOE Commercial Building Prototype Model was modified to represent the typical characteristics and space use compositions of academic buildings based on the space type and functional use data collected from 8 U.S. universities. The occupancy schedules were then replaced with stochastic academic building-based occupancy schedules, developed from a prior study by the authors. Next, the baseline and proposed models were built, of which a fixed setpoint schedule and minimum outdoor air flowrate were used for the baseline model. The proposed model resets the temperature schedule and minimum outdoor air flow schedule based on the proposed occupancy schedules, following the recommendations of ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2019, and ASHARE 62.1-2019. The results of this work provide typical academic building models with integrated occupancy schedules which can be used to evaluate energy saving measures, and aid building designers and operators in making informed decisions in applying appropriate control strategies to optimize building energy systems, as well as predict energy use and demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]