Modeling Effects of Occupants’ Time-Off Behavior in Buildings on Load Calculation and Energy Modeling

The number of people living and working in a building is one of the key inputs to the load calculation and energy modeling software for buildings HVAC system design. The number of occupants in a building not only has a considerable effect on the internal load/ energy consumption of the building, but also directly affects the required building quantity of outdoor air. Load associated to the number of occupants and quantity of required outdoor air for these people contributes close to one-third of the total load/ energy consumption of a building [1]. In addition, number of the occupants will affect the associated equipment load/ consumed energy by the people as well. HVAC engineers select the number of the people living and working in the buildings based on the design architect’s intention, type of application, and the engineering standards and guidelines recommendations. Design engineers based on the recommendations of these guidelines, and their own experience/judgement and architect input, set the design value for the number of occupants in the calculating software. As the result of design engineer assumption/ judgement which generally tends to give some diversity allowance for the design number of occupants, the load and energy consumption of the buildings will be reduced uniformly throughout the year depending how much allowance each engineer assumes. In this research authors will use agent-based modeling simulation to model occupants’ behavior when selecting their time on-off hours throughout the year. Using this modeling helps the researchers to evaluate if it is possible to justify engineers’ judgement for uniformly reduction of the number of people and their associated equipment when performing load calculation and energy modeling. The model will also contribute to developing a better occupant scheduling when running load calculation/ energy modeling programs.