A preliminary study of occupants' use of manual lighting controls in private offices: A case study

摘要

While building engineers attempt to reduce energy use and provide occupants with comfortable spaces by automating building systems, poor implementation and neglecting occupants' preferences may cause the opposite effect. Monitoring occupants-building interactions provides valuable information in this regard. The main objective of this research is to examine the impact of the manual and automatic lighting control systems on the lighting energy use in private offices using experimental and simulation approaches. Probabilistic models for occupants' presence and lighting use were developed based on the empirical data collected in 25 perimeter offices for 15 months. After simulating the developed models, simulation results indicate a reduction in the lighting electricity use by a factor of seven with the manual control system in comparison with the occupancy-on/vacancy-off controls. The ratio of the time when the lights were on to the occupied period was reduced by 62% based on the experimental observations and 90% based on the simulation results, using the manual-on/vacancy-off control system compared to the occupancy-on/vacancy-off control system. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.