HOTSPOT ENABLED ACCURATE DETERMINATION OF COMMON AREA OCCUPANCY USING NETWORK TOOLS (HEADCOUNT)
The amount of energy currently used to heat, cool, and ventilate buildings (HVAC) is about 13% of the entire United States energy consumption. Much of this energy is wasted because it is used when buildings are either not occupied at all or occupied well under their maximum design conditions. Human presence sensing could generate significant energy savings by enabling temperature and ventilation set-backs but will only gain commercial acceptance if the sensors are extremely accurate. Traditional motion sensors, often used in buildings to adjust lighting levels, lack the ability to detect stationary sources, differentiate humans from pets and other objects, and provide advanced quantitative information about the environment. A whole new class of sensor systems is needed to enable accurate and reliable control of HVAC levels in residential and commercial building environments, without collecting any private information on the occupants. The principal objective of the SENSOR program is to reduce energy used by HVAC systems in buildings by 30% while minimizing or eliminating the need for human intervention. To meet this need, Endeveo Inc. developed a sensor system based on WiFi access points or “hotspots” that have been ubiquitous for some time. Recent changes in the wireless protocols that run on those hotspots, developed to improve bandwidth delivery to a growing number of networked users, can be used, in combination with computationally efficient machine learning algorithms, to enable sophisticated indoor radar capabilities for human detection. The sensor system we have developed and demonstrated is a do-it-yourself (DIY) installable sensor system that meets the energy savings, costs and detection accuracy requirements of the SENSOR FOA in residential settings. Our sensor system is self-contained, beaconless, self-calibrating, capable of generating updated presence estimates in real time, and does not collect any personally identifiable information. The sensors and sensor hubs can be implemented using a wide variety of already commercially available devices that include standard 802.11ac (or higher) chipsets, including currently deployed routers, access points, thermostats and newer Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as home assistants (e.g. Google Home, Amazon Echo). While the sensor hardware components use so-called “WiFi protocols” to wirelessly probe an environment, they do not require nor utilize any access, WiFi or otherwise, to the internet or outside world. Therefore, the approach offers cost-effective occupancy sensing to homes with and without cable or internet services or broadband access. The importance of the sensor hardware being based on WiFi devices is that it can take advantage of components and devices that have already been pushed down the manufacturing/learning cost curve.
- Research Organization:
- Endeveo, Inc.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AR0000932
- OSTI ID:
- 1779619
- Type / Phase:
- SBIR (Phase II)
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-ENDEVEO-0000932
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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