Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Modeling occupancy-driven building loads for large and diversified building stocks through the use of parametric schedules

Journal Article · · Applied Energy
Building energy modeling provides a fundamental tool to assess the potential for energy efficiency to contribute to reducing world energy consumption and global emissions. Occupancy-related operations are a key source of uncertainty for building energy analysis, particularly for aggregated building stocks. At a district or city level, it is critical to estimate aggregated power load profiles for sizing power grid infrastructure, power plant capacity allocation, and energy efficiency measures. The stochastic nature of behavior-related operations complicates the creation of models that accurately capture building load profiles for entire building stocks. This research introduces a new methodology called parametric schedules to model occupancy-driven schedules for large and diverse building stocks. In contrast to computationally expensive methodologies proposed in the literature, our work does not use a recursive time-consuming step. Occupancy is estimated by the extrapolation of operation times directly from metered electric consumption data; occupancy-related schedules are stochastically assigned to each building model, guaranteeing diversity of operation times in the stock. Our procedure has been tested on a large, diversified data-set of 25,000 commercial buildings in Los Angeles, California. It proved to be able to adequately represent the stochastic schedules diversity of the stock and to refine the stock calibration process by 1%. This innovative approach represents a useful asset for utility companies, grid operators, urban planners, and balancing authorities, seeking to improve building stock modeling and better estimate the impact of energy conservation measures. – This work is part of a larger stock modeling tool called ComStock, which is under development by NREL.
Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Energy Efficiency Office. Building Technologies Office
Grant/Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
1660214
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1870330
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA--5500-77239; MainId:26185; UUID:0c677b87-4725-440f-a703-75afb7144a7b; MainAdminID:16303
Journal Information:
Applied Energy, Journal Name: Applied Energy Vol. 276; ISSN 0306-2619
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (90)

A Market-Specific Methodology for a Commercial Building Energy Performance Index journal August 2014
Energy savings potential from improved building controls for the US commercial building sector journal September 2017
Life cycle assessment of a single-family residential building in Canada: A case study journal November 2013
Simulation and visualization of energy-related occupant behavior in office buildings journal March 2017
An agent-based stochastic Occupancy Simulator journal June 2017
An agent-based model of building occupant behavior during load shedding journal June 2017
Building simulation: Ten challenges journal April 2018
Behavioural, physical and socio-economic factors in household cooling energy consumption journal June 2011
Overview of thermal energy storage (TES) potential energy savings and climate change mitigation in Spain and Europe journal August 2011
Predicted vs. actual energy performance of non-domestic buildings: Using post-occupancy evaluation data to reduce the performance gap journal September 2012
Modeling the effect of climate change on U.S. state-level buildings energy demands in an integrated assessment framework journal January 2014
Heating and cooling building energy demand evaluation; a simplified model and a modified degree days approach journal September 2014
Modeling and forecasting energy consumption for heterogeneous buildings using a physical–statistical approach journal April 2015
Photovoltaic self-consumption in buildings: A review journal March 2015
Integrated model for characterization of spatiotemporal building energy consumption patterns in neighborhoods and city districts journal March 2015
Smart households: Dispatch strategies and economic analysis of distributed energy storage for residential peak shaving journal June 2015
Commercial Building Energy Saver: An energy retrofit analysis toolkit journal December 2015
Multiobjective optimisation of energy systems and building envelope retrofit in a residential community journal March 2017
Energy demand profile generation with detailed time resolution at an urban district scale: A reference building approach and case study journal May 2017
A data-driven predictive model of city-scale energy use in buildings journal July 2017
Experimental assessment of room occupancy patterns in an office building. Comparison of different approaches based on CO 2 concentrations and computer power consumption journal August 2017
Automatic generation and simulation of urban building energy models based on city datasets for city-scale building retrofit analysis journal November 2017
A novel stochastic modeling method to simulate cooling loads in residential districts journal November 2017
Estimating the influence of occupant behavior on building heating and cooling energy in one simulation run journal August 2018
Occupant perceptions of building information model-based energy visualizations in eco-feedback systems journal July 2018
Translating climate change and heating system electrification impacts on building energy use to future greenhouse gas emissions and electric grid capacity requirements in California journal September 2018
New methods for clustering district heating users based on consumption patterns journal October 2019
Handling uncertainty in housing stock models journal February 2012
Energy analysis of the non-domestic building stock of Greater London journal May 2012
Occupants' window opening behaviour: A literature review of factors influencing occupant behaviour and models journal December 2012
A critical review of observation studies, modeling, and simulation of adaptive occupant behaviors in offices journal December 2013
Scalable methodology for large scale building energy improvement: Relevance of calibration in model-based retrofit analysis journal May 2015
Urban building energy modeling – A review of a nascent field journal February 2016
Developing a landscape of urban building energy use with improved spatiotemporal representations in a cool-humid climate journal May 2018
Urban energy use modeling methods and tools: A review and an outlook journal August 2019
A Meta Model Based Bayesian Approach for Building Energy Models Calibration journal December 2017
Proposal of a modeling approach considering urban form for evaluation of city level energy management journal May 2007
Assessment of building cooling energy need through a quasi-steady state model: Simplified correlation for gain-loss mismatch journal May 2007
A generalised stochastic model for the simulation of occupant presence journal January 2008
Using building energy simulation and geospatial modeling techniques to determine high resolution building sector energy consumption profiles journal January 2008
Energy-saving potential by improving occupants’ behavior in urban residential sector in Hangzhou City, China journal July 2009
The effect of occupancy and building characteristics on energy use for space and water heating in Dutch residential stock journal November 2009
The dark side of occupants’ behaviour on building energy use journal February 2010
Comparison between predicted and actual energy performance for winter heating in high-performance residential buildings in the Lombardy region (Italy) journal April 2012
Calibration of building energy models for retrofit analysis under uncertainty journal April 2012
A probabilistic energy model for non-domestic building sectors applied to analysis of school buildings in greater London journal November 2012
Occupant behavior and schedule modeling for building energy simulation through office appliance power consumption data mining journal October 2014
Occupancy schedules learning process through a data mining framework journal February 2015
Simulation of occupancy in buildings journal January 2015
Occupant behavior modeling for building performance simulation: Current state and future challenges journal November 2015
There's a measure for that! journal April 2016
An occupant behavior modeling tool for co-simulation journal April 2016
City Energy Analyst (CEA): Integrated framework for analysis and optimization of building energy systems in neighborhoods and city districts journal February 2016
How peers’ personal attitudes affect indoor microclimate and energy need in an institutional building: Results from a continuous monitoring campaign in summer and winter conditions journal August 2016
Validation of a Bayesian-based method for defining residential archetypes in urban building energy models journal January 2017
IEA EBC annex 53: Total energy use in buildings—Analysis and evaluation methods journal October 2017
Bayesian calibration of building energy models with large datasets journal November 2017
A review on occupant behavior in urban building energy models journal September 2018
A multi-scale calibration approach for process-oriented aggregated building energy demand models journal May 2019
Impacts of climate change on energy consumption and peak demand in buildings: A detailed regional approach journal January 2015
Modeling Boston: A workflow for the efficient generation and maintenance of urban building energy models from existing geospatial datasets journal December 2016
Modeling urban building energy use: A review of modeling approaches and procedures journal December 2017
A supporting method for defining energy strategies in the building sector at urban scale journal April 2013
Data-driven strategic planning of building energy retrofitting: The case of Stockholm journal October 2019
Tracking the human-building interaction: A longitudinal field study of occupant behavior in air-conditioned offices journal June 2015
Energy characterization of a PASLINK test cell with a gravel covered roof using a novel methodology: Sensitivity analysis and Bayesian calibration journal March 2019
Progress in electrical energy storage system: A critical review journal March 2009
A review of methods to match building energy simulation models to measured data journal September 2014
Review of building energy modeling for control and operation journal September 2014
Modeling the heating and cooling energy demand of urban buildings at city scale journal January 2018
The human dimensions of energy use in buildings: A review journal January 2018
Development and improvement of occupant behavior models towards realistic building performance simulation: A review journal October 2019
SUNtool – A new modelling paradigm for simulating and optimising urban sustainability journal September 2007
Planning for sustainable cities by estimating building occupancy with mobile phones journal August 2019
Agent-Based Modeling of Occupants and Their Impact on Energy Use in Commercial Buildings journal July 2012
Building energy models and assessment systems at the district and city scales: a review journal July 2012
The impact of occupants' behaviour on building energy demand journal December 2011
A hierarchical Bayesian framework for calibrating micro-level models with macro-level data journal July 2013
Variability between domestic buildings: the impact on energy use journal February 2015
Modelling uncertainty in district energy simulations by stochastic residential occupant behaviour journal July 2015
The sensitivity of building performance simulation results to the choice of occupants’ presence models: a case study journal December 2015
International survey on current occupant modelling approaches in building performance simulation journal September 2016
TEASER: an open tool for urban energy modelling of building stocks journal January 2016
Assessing overall building energy performance of a large population of residential single-family homes using limited field data journal May 2018
Savitzky-Golay least-squares polynomial filters in ECG signal processing conference January 2005
Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System vs. Regression based approaches for annual electricity load forecasting
  • Ghanbari, Arash; Ghaderi, S. Farid; Azadeh, M. Ali
  • 2nd International Conference on Computer and Automation Engineering (ICCAE 2010), 2010 The 2nd International Conference on Computer and Automation Engineering (ICCAE) https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCAE.2010.5451534
conference February 2010
On the Spatio-Temporal End-User Energy Demands of a Dense Urban Environment journal May 2017
Integrating occupant behaviour in the simulation of coupled electric and thermal systems in buildings
  • Baetens, Ruben; Saelens, Dirk
  • The 8th International Modelica Conference, Technical Univeristy, Dresden, Germany, Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp11063847
conference June 2011
Methodologies and Advancements in the Calibration of Building Energy Models journal March 2015
Interactive Buildings: A Review journal July 2019