Human-centric green building design: the energy saving potential of occupants’ behaviour enhancement in the office environment

Abstract

Buildings energy efficiency is highly dependent on occupants’ energy and environmental lifestyle. In this view, this work aims at identifying the potential benefits of human-based energy retrofit strategies, namely human behaviour triggering actions and associated energy awareness, through large-scale surveys and calibrated building dynamic simulation. In detail, a questionnaire is submitted to office occupants to understand workers’ energy behaviours, indoor environmental perception, and identify tailored triggering actions. Therefore, different occupant behaviour scenarios involving energy wasteful and efficient human-building interactions are modelled when implemented in a case study office building in Italy. Findings show that the elimination of energy wasteful behaviours may involve building energy need reduction up to 17%. Furthermore, triggers aimed at driving energy efficient human control of HVAC setting and natural ventilation provide further annual performance improvement. Therefore, motivating occupants to change behaviour is a challenge to reduce energy consumption while improving indoor environmental conditions and cost-energy benefits.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Occupant Behaviour
• building energy efficiency
• building simulation
• human-based energy retrofit
• cost analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Elettrica Valeri S.r.l. for providing the case study and supporting the project “COMMEET”: COMFORT MEETs smart building management for energy saving and the follow-up project “SMEET-WELL”: SMart building managEment for Energy saving meets WELLbeing. Acknowledgement are due to the Department of Engineering at University of Perugia for supporting both the projects and to Regione Umbria for supporting the project “SMEET-WELL”. Acknowledgements are also due to the Italian project SOS-CITTA’ supported by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia under grant agreement No. 2018.0499.026 and to the IEA EBC Annex 79 “Occupant-centric building design and operation” for inspiring human-centric research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the local company Elettrica Valeri S.r.l. within the framework of the national research project “COM-MEET: COMFORT MEETs smart building management for energy saving”.