TO-22-C059 - A Practical Method to Account for Different Possible Occupant Behaviors During Design Phase

As building designs become more and more energy-efficient, occupant behavior has emerged as one of the most important factors affecting thermal comfort and energy consumption, in particular in the residential sector. Since occupant behavior exhibits a strong variability from day to day and from a dwelling to another, stochastic models have been developed to avoid the drawback of fixed schedules in the design phase. These models can provide more information to practitioners, but they can be quite time-consuming and complex to operate. This paper introduces a practical and simplified way to consider the spectrum of occupant related aspects in the residential sector by generating three strategically chosen schedules representing the complete range of behaviors. Findings showed that simplified schedules yield similar annual aggregated results compared to the detailed profiles. The method allows to better estimate possible building energy consumption and thermal comfort and to compare design solutions considering different occupants.