Session: 08-07-01: Energy Systems Components

Paper Number: 94363

94363 - Modeling Effects of Occupants’ Time-Off Behavior in Buildings on Load Calculation and Energy Modeling 

Number of people living and working in a building is one of the inputs to the load calculation and energy modeling software for calculating required heating/ cooling quantities and therefore, selecting HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) system for the buildings. 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 quantity of the outdoor air that is required for the building by relevant HVAC codes. Experience shows the load/ energy consumption of the building due to outdoor air can be close to one-third of the total load/ energy consumption of a building. Professional engineers select the number of the people living and working in the buildings based on the engineering standards recommendations. These standards generally are used to assign the number of people to each type of building based on its type of activities and its effective square foot of the building floor plan. They then based on their experience/ judgement set the calculating software in a way to only calculate the load and to model building energy consumption based on 80-90% of the total number of people in the building. This of course will affect the quantity of load/ consumed energy by the occupants’ associated equipment as well. As the result of this engineering assumption the overall buildings’ load and energy consumption will be reduced uniformly throughout the year. This random selection of the diversity is generally presents itself in occupants, and equipment schedules.

In the research presented here authors have used agent-based modeling simulation to model occupants’ behavior. The studied behavior of the occupants is how they would select their time on-off hours throughout the year. Agents are modeled as actual building occupants in this model and choose how to use their off hours during the year. This selection is based on a random algorithm written in the agent-based modeling software as one of the agents’ characteristics. As a result, each agent selects his/ her time offs differently from the other agents. Using this modeling will help the authors to evaluate if it is prudent to justify engineers’ judgement for uniformly reduction of the number of people and their associated equipment when performing load calculation and energy modeling for different buildings. The model will also contribute to developing a better occupant scheduling when running load calculation/ energy modeling programs for buildings.

Presenting Author: Javad Khazaii Kennesaw State University

Presenting Author Biography: Dr. Javad Khazaii earned his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology, his Master of Business Administration with a concentration of Computer Information Systems from Georgia State University, and his PhD in Architecture with a major in building technology and a minor in building construction from Georgia Institute of Technology. He has more than two decades of professional project management, design and energy modeling. He is an associate professor of mechanical engineering technology in southern polytechnic college of engineering and engineering technology in Kennesaw State University.

Authors:

Lakshmi Prasanna Pedarla Kennesaw State University
Javad Khazaii Kennesaw State University