Research on typical occupant air-conditioning behavior of Changsha university dormitory buildings based on questionnaire surveys

Abstract

College dormitories, characterized by high occupancy and energy density, have huge potential for energy savings. However, most existing energy efficiency studies of college dormitories dealt with air conditioning (AC) use behavior on fixed schedules, ignoring the stochastic nature of occupants, resulting in gaps between the designed and actual energy consumption, and making the application of energy-saving technologies much less effective. The key to solving this problem is to understand and quantify energy use behavior in college dormitories. Therefore, this study conducted a large-scale questionnaire survey to obtain AC use modes in college dormitories and reveal the intrinsic connection between them and energy consumption, and based on this, categorize typical behaviors. Firstly, typical building models of college dormitories in Changsha were built through field surveys. Subsequently, AC use modes in college dormitories were obtained through a large-scale questionnaire survey. Furthermore, the energy consumption of each AC use mode was simulated by EnergyPlus, and several representative AC use patterns were clustered using the K-means algorithm. Finally, based on the actual AC use behavior, the energy consumption and thermal comfort characteristics of typical dormitory models were analyzed. The results categorized five representative patterns in college dormitories, namely little AC use in summer” pattern (2.56 %), “no AC in winter “pattern (25.71 %), “no AC” pattern (2.7 %), “thermal sensation-activated “pattern (29.91 %), and “time-based” pattern 39.12 %). These findings are beneficial to building energy efficiency, specifically, researchers and designers can use these typical AC use patterns and their proportions to predict building energy consumption, thus eliminating the inaccuracies brought about by personnel behaviors, and then to achieve more accurate building energy simulations and to ensure the effectiveness of energy-saving technologies.