| dc.description.abstract | The share of energy use in the building sector is significantly higher than in the other sectors. Consequently, many measurements have been implemented to make the buildings more efficient and self-independent in recent years.
High-energy performance buildings have successfully reduced the amount of delivered energy by having better energy solutions. These solutions include reducing energy demand and production of on-site renewable energy. Zero-energy buildings in Norway use mainly passive house standard as a guideline, and consequently they have minimum energy loss. Nevertheless, some studies show higher measured energy values during operation than predicted energy for such buildings. Oversimplification of the buildings’ energy modeling and the use of pre-defined and standardized inputs are among the main factors causing this gap.
The building body and systems alone have relatively static or predictable performance. On the contrary, buildings’ context and surroundings characterize as more dynamic parameters. One dynamic feature that can affect the energy performance of buildings is occupants. People spend a considerable portion of their lives indoors. They would be present or absent, at the same time, they would adjust the building’s systems and devices positively or negatively to fulfill their indoor, phycological, and physiological needs.
This study aims to illustrate an in-depth analysis of the possible gaps in the energy performance of a high-performance building due to occupants’ roles (presence and actions). A dynamic Building Performance Simulation tool is utilized for this aim. The scenarios use stochastic modeling to show occupants’ unpredictable and complicated characteristics.
The other studied areas include 1- internal load gains impact on the energy demand, 2- evaluation of the thermal comfort in the potential worst case, and 3- evaluation of possible design options to compensate for a wasteful user.
The findings show a significant gap when it comes to the negative behaviors in the overall energy performance. It also shows that internal loads have a massive impact on change of the energy needs. The low thermal comfort levels can easily reach favorable conditions by implementing the adaptive solutions in the occupant’s profile, while design options cannot easily address the hostile impact of the user.
Keywords: occupant modeling, post-occupancy simulations, energy performance gap, occupant behavior, operational energy | |
