TY - JOUR
T1 - How much HVAC energy could be saved from the occupant-centric smart home thermostat
T2 - A nationwide simulation study
AU - Pang, Zhihong
AU - Chen, Yan
AU - Zhang, Jian
AU - O'Neill, Zheng
AU - Cheng, Hwakong
AU - Dong, Bing
N1 - Funding Information:
The research reported in this paper was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) under award number DE-AR0000936.
Funding Information:
The research reported in this paper was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency ? Energy (ARPA-E) under award number DE-AR0000936.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2021/2/1
Y1 - 2021/2/1
N2 - Thermostat management plays a significant role in household energy conservation. This study aims to conduct a systematic and comprehensive analysis to quantify the energy savings potential of the occupant-centric smart thermostat based on a large-scale nationwide simulation infrastructure. The single-family Residential Prototype Building Model was used to represent a typical single-family detached house in the U.S. A generalized random occupancy presence schedule was created based on an occupancy probability schedule and k-means clustering algorithm. A total of 16,000 simulations, which were composed of four building foundation types, four heating source types, 40 American cities, five building energy code versions, and five thermostat control strategies, were conducted to evaluate the performances of the smart home thermostat in terms of saving building energy usage and maintaining occupant thermal comfort. The nationwide simulation results suggested that the temperature setback control during the unoccupied period could achieve some energy savings in the U.S. households. However, only very few of the 40 cities could see an annual Heating, Ventilation, and Air-conditioning energy savings ratio of over 30%. Besides, the implementation of the occupied standby temperature reset could greatly increase the peak load of the HVAC system and contribute to the grid load imbalance issue. It's also worth noting that the smart recovery feature is proved to be able to bring additional benefits for a smart home thermostat. It could decrease the temperature setpoint not met time by about 30 min, and relieve the thermal discomfort due to the temperature setback control.
AB - Thermostat management plays a significant role in household energy conservation. This study aims to conduct a systematic and comprehensive analysis to quantify the energy savings potential of the occupant-centric smart thermostat based on a large-scale nationwide simulation infrastructure. The single-family Residential Prototype Building Model was used to represent a typical single-family detached house in the U.S. A generalized random occupancy presence schedule was created based on an occupancy probability schedule and k-means clustering algorithm. A total of 16,000 simulations, which were composed of four building foundation types, four heating source types, 40 American cities, five building energy code versions, and five thermostat control strategies, were conducted to evaluate the performances of the smart home thermostat in terms of saving building energy usage and maintaining occupant thermal comfort. The nationwide simulation results suggested that the temperature setback control during the unoccupied period could achieve some energy savings in the U.S. households. However, only very few of the 40 cities could see an annual Heating, Ventilation, and Air-conditioning energy savings ratio of over 30%. Besides, the implementation of the occupied standby temperature reset could greatly increase the peak load of the HVAC system and contribute to the grid load imbalance issue. It's also worth noting that the smart recovery feature is proved to be able to bring additional benefits for a smart home thermostat. It could decrease the temperature setpoint not met time by about 30 min, and relieve the thermal discomfort due to the temperature setback control.
KW - Large-scale simulation
KW - Occupancy presence sensor
KW - Occupant-centric smart thermostat
KW - Residential buildings
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U2 - 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.116251
DO - 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.116251
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85097405175
SN - 0306-2619
VL - 283
JO - Applied Energy
JF - Applied Energy
M1 - 116251
ER -