Energy Efficient Building Environment Control Strategies Using Real-time Occupancy Measurements

Varick L. Erickson, Yiqing Lin, Ankur Kamthe, Rohini Brahme, Alberto E. Cerpa, Michael D. Sohn, Satish Narayanan

Abstract

Current climate control systems often rely on building regulation maximum occupancy numbers for maintaining proper temperatures. However, in many situations, there are rooms that are used infrequently, and may be heated or cooled needlessly. Having knowledge regarding occupancy and being able to accurately predict usage patterns may allow significant energy-savings by intelligent control of the L-HVAC systems. In this paper, we report on the deployment of a wireless camera sensor network for collecting data regarding occupancy in a large multi-function building. The system estimates occupancy with an accuracy of 80%. Using data collected from this system, we construct multivariate Gaussian and agent based models for predicting user mobility patterns in buildings. Using these models, we can predict room usage thereby enabling us to control the HVAC systems in an adaptive manner. Our simulations indicate a 14% reduction in HVAC energy usage by having an optimal control strategy based on occupancy estimates and usage patterns.

Availability

PDF

Reference

Varick L. Erickson, Yiqing Lin, Ankur Kamthe, Rohini Brahme, Alberto E. Cerpa, Michael D. Sohn, Satish Narayanan, "Energy Efficient Building Environment Control Strategies Using Real-time Occupancy Measurements," Proceedings of the 1st ACM Workshop On Embedded Sensing Systems For Energy-Efficient Buildings (BuildSys 2009), pp. 19--24, ACM, Berkeley, CA, USA, November, 2009.

Bibtex

@Conference{Erickson09a,
  author =       "Varick L. Erickson and Yiqing Lin and Ankur Kamthe and
                 Rohini Brahme and Alberto E. Cerpa and Michael D. Sohn
                 and and Satish Narayanan",
  title =        "Energy Efficient Building Environment Control
                 Strategies Using Real-time Occupancy Measurements",
  booktitle =    "Proceedings of the 1st ACM Workshop On Embedded
                 Sensing Systems For Energy-Efficient Buildings
                 (BuildSys 2009)",
  year =         "2009",
  pages =        "19--24",
  publisher =    "ACM",
  address =      "Berkeley, CA, USA",
  month =        nov,
  URL =          "http://www.andes.ucmerced.edu/papers/Erickson09a.pdf",
  accept =       "40",
  cited =        "67",
}

Copyright

This paper is copyright © 2009 by its authors. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial purposes. New copies must bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission of the authors.