Occupancy simulation in three residential research houses

Three houses of similar floor plan are being compared for energy consumption. The first house is a typical builder house of 2400 ft² (223 m²) in east Tennessee. The second house contains retrofits available to a home owner such as energy efficient appliances, windows and air-to-air heat pump, as well as an insulated attic which contains the duct work. The third house was built using optimum-value framing construction with photovoltaic modules and solar water heating. To simulate typical occupant energy consumption researchers have set up appliances, lights, and plug loads to turn on and off automatically according to a schedule based on the Building America Research Benchmark Definition. As energy efficiency continues to be a focus for protecting the environment, national security, and conserving resources, experiments involving whole house energy consumption have shown to be extremely valuable toward filling the need for real field performance data without the enormous variability that comes with occupant behavior. This paper describes how to simulate the same average American family living in each of these research houses. The process for achieving automated occupancy simulation will be discussed and the performance of the occupancy simulation system over the 2010 calendar year will be diagnosed. Data comparing the energy use of each house will be presented and it will be shown that the second house used 37% less and the third house used 67% less energy than the control house in 2010. It will also be shown how an energy saving family can further decrease energy use in the third house to 73% less over the control house occupied by an average American family.