Model for Thermal Comfort and Energy Saving Based on Individual Sensation Estimation
This addresses energy inefficiency and work productivity issues in office environments by personalizing thermal control, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing sensing and optimization methods.
The researchers tackled the problem of high energy consumption and thermal discomfort in office air conditioning by proposing an automatic control system that uses vital information to estimate individual thermal sensations and optimize settings for both room air conditioning and personal wearable devices. Simulation results showed the system improved both energy saving and comfort maximization across various room sizes, user numbers, and heating/cooling conditions.
In office spaces, the ratio of energy consumption of air conditioning and lighting for maintaining the environment comfort is about 70%. On the other hand, many people claim being dissatisfied with the temperature of the air conditioning. Therefore, there is concern about work efficiency reduction caused by the current air conditioning control. In this research, we propose an automatic control system that improves both energy-saving and thermal comfort of all indoor users by quantifying individual differences in thermal comfort from vital information, on the basis of which the optimal settings of both air conditioning and wearable systems that can directly heat and cool individuals are determined. Various environments were simulated with different room sizes, numbers of users in a room, and heating/cooling conditions. The simulation results demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed system for both energy saving and comfort maximization.