ePANACEA Advanced occupant behaviour patterns for the next generation of EPCs
Alexander Deliyannis
Occupant behaviour is now widely recognised as one of the most important factors contributing to the uncertainty of building performance. The operating characteristics and the occupants’ use of space are closely related to the energy needs and consumption of buildings. This work was developed in order to explore the possible implementation of advanced occupant models into the Assessment Method 3 developed under the ePANACEA methodology for the use of calibrated models based on dynamic simulation for Energy Performance Certification of buildings.
The work is structured in three clearly differentiated phases:
Firstly, it comprised a research on the current state of the art in the implementation of user behaviour in dynamic simulation models.
Then, work focused on evaluating the energy performance of a static office model against six stochastic behavioural models to evaluate the sensitivity of the results on Occupancy, Lighting, Plug-in equipment, Window shade, Operable window and Thermostat.
The third phase included the impact assessment derived from taking actual occupant behaviour into account through a case study of residential typology.