Impacts of Occupant Behavior on Building Energy Consumption and Energy Savings Analysis of Upgrading ASHRAE 90.1 Energy Efficiency Standards

Commercial prototype building models were developed by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) to analyze the energy savings of the ASHRAE 90.1 standard. However, in the DOE models, occupant behavior inputs were deterministic and the stochasticity of occupant behavior was not fully characterized. This study evaluated the impacts of stochastic occupant behavior on building energy consumption and energy savings analysis from upgrading the ASHRAE 90.1-2016 to 2019 in sixteen climate zones in the United States (U.S.). Three occupant behavior styles (austerity, normal, and wasteful) were defined to represent the different levels of energy consciousness. The DOE medium office prototype models were used as the baseline (normal behavior style). The occupant behavior functional mock-up unit (obFMU) was used to model the stochastic occupant behavior models (austerity and wasteful). The EnergyPlus medium office prototype models were modified to co-simulate with the obFMU models. The results of 16 climate zones were aggregated by the relative construction volume of each climate zone. The results showed that the weighted national annual source energy use intensity (EUI) of the austerity, normal, and wasteful behavior styles were 203.81 kWh/m², 287.15 kWh/m², and 388.33 kWh/m² for ASHRAE 90.1-2016, and 192.43 kWh/m², 273.48 kWh/m², and 371.28 kWh/m² for ASHRAE 90.1-2019, respectively. Compared to the normal behavior style, the austerity behavior style consumed 29% less source energy, while the wasteful behavior style consumed 36% more source energy. From upgrading the ASHRAE 90.1-2016 to 2019, the energy saving percentages based on the austerity, normal, and wasteful behavior styles were 5.59%, 4.78%, and 4.42%, respectively. The stochastic occupant behavior significantly impacted the building energy consumption, and their impacts on the energy savings analysis of upgrading ASHRAE 90.1 were also not negligible.

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