skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Smart thermostat data-driven U.S. residential occupancy schedules and development of a U.S. residential occupancy schedule simulator

Journal Article · · Building and Environment
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4]
  1. Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States)
  2. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) (Hong Kong); HKUST Shenzhen-Hong Kong Collaborative Innovation Research Institute (China)
  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States)

Occupancy schedule is one of the key inputs in Building Energy Modeling (BEM) to reflect the interaction between buildings and occupants. Over the past decades, standardized occupancy schedules, developed mainly by engineering rule-of-thumb, have been widely used in BEM due to its simplicity and lack of real measured occupancy data. However, the BEM community has recognized their association with uncertainty and reliability in simulation results from BEM. This study introduces representative occupancy schedules in the U.S. residential buildings, derived from a large smart thermostat dataset and time-series K-means clustering, and an open-source tool to generate a stochastic residential occupancy schedule. Over 90,000 residential occupancy schedules were estimated from the ecobee Donate Your Data dataset. Then, the representative occupancy schedules were identified through clustering. This study further investigated the impacts of three parameters (day, house type, and state) on residential occupancy schedules. Then, a tool, the Residential Occupancy Schedule Simulator (ROSS), is developed using the representative occupancy schedules derived in this study. Details of this tool are presented in this paper. In conclusion, the derived representative occupancy schedules and the ROSS tool can help improve the energy modeling of residential buildings.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Energy Efficiency Office. Building Technologies Office; National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; 1663513
OSTI ID:
2294049
Journal Information:
Building and Environment, Vol. 243; ISSN 0360-1323
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (20)

A systematic approach to occupancy modeling in ambient sensor-rich buildings journal July 2013
Discovering, processing and consolidating housing stock and smart thermostat data in support of energy end-use mapping and housing retrofit program planning journal March 2022
Comparison of machine learning models for occupancy prediction in residential buildings using connected thermostat data journal August 2019
Modeling occupancy in single person offices journal February 2005
Challenges in Sustainable Development of Smart Cities in India journal August 2020
Building occupancy diversity and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system energy efficiency journal August 2016
Typical occupancy profiles and behaviors in residential buildings in the United States journal March 2020
Modeling personalized occupancy profiles for representing long term patterns by using ambient context journal August 2014
Time-series clustering – A decade review journal October 2015
An assessment of opinions and perceptions of smart thermostats using aspect-based sentiment analysis of online reviews journal March 2020
Silhouettes: A graphical aid to the interpretation and validation of cluster analysis journal November 1987
Predicting household occupancy for smart heating control: A comparative performance analysis of state-of-the-art approaches journal December 2014
Occupant-centric urban building energy modeling: Approaches, inputs, and data sources - A review journal February 2022
A longitudinal study of thermostat behaviors based on climate, seasonal, and energy price considerations using connected thermostat data journal July 2018
Revealing occupancy patterns in an office building through the use of occupancy sensor data journal December 2013
A generalised stochastic model for the simulation of occupant presence journal January 2008
A method to generate heating and cooling schedules based on data from connected thermostats journal December 2020
Building occupancy detection through sensor belief networks journal September 2006
Human-in-the-loop HVAC operations: A quantitative review on occupancy, comfort, and energy-efficiency dimensions journal April 2019
Occupancy diversity factors for common university building types journal September 2010

Similar Records

Informing the planning of rotating power outages in heat waves through data analytics of connected smart thermostats for residential buildings
Journal Article · Tue Jun 22 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Environmental Research Letters · OSTI ID:2294049

Cluster analysis of occupancy schedules in residential buildings in the United States
Journal Article · Tue Feb 02 00:00:00 EST 2021 · Energy and Buildings · OSTI ID:2294049

Ecobee Donate Your Data 1,000 homes in 2017
Dataset · Tue Mar 15 00:00:00 EDT 2022 · OSTI ID:2294049

Related Subjects