In commercial buildings, more than 40% of the energy is consumed by HVAC systems. There is usually a significant difference between energy demand and energy consumption in buildings. It has been widely recognized that occupancy is one of the most important factors impacting actual demands for HVAC systems. However, it is still not clear how and when occupancy should be integrated with HVAC systems at the building level for a long period of time. This is a complex problem as occupancy is variant in nature, and each day occupants have different presences. This paper systematically identifies the significance of variant transitions of occupant presence on the absolute energy efficiency and the relative performance of building level setpoint/setback control policies. An actual office building is used for implementing the proposed methodology. The results showed that the variant transitions of occupant presence have significant influences on the absolute energy efficiency but not on the relative performance of different setpoint/setback control policies.
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