Occupancy-Based Energy Management in Buildings: Final Report to Sponsors

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the University of California Merced(UCM), and the United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) conducted field studiesand modeling analyses in the Classroom and Office Building (COB) and the Scienceand Engineering Building (S&E) at the University of California, Merced. In the first year,of a planned multiyear project, our goal was to study the feasibility and efficacy ofoccupancy-based energy management. The first-year research goals were twofold.The first was to explore the likely energy savings if we know the number and location ofbuilding occupants in a typical commercial building. The second was to model andestimate people movement in a building. Our findings suggest that a 10-14% reductionin HVAC energy consumption is possible over typical HVAC operating conditions whenwe know occupancy throughout the building. With the conclusion of the first-year tasks,we plan to review these results further before this group pursues follow-on funding.