The dark side of occupants’ behaviour on building energy use

While most studies focus on energy savings during occupied hours, this paper shows the shocking quantities of energy wasted during non-occupied hours in commercial buildings. At least five detailed energy audits were carried out in the hot and dry climates of Botswana and South Africa. The work shows that more energy is used during non-working hours (56%) than during working hours (44%). This arises largely from occupants’ behaviour of leaving lights and equipment on at the end of the day, and partly due to poor zoning and controls. There is a crying need for building occupants to learn to switch off what they do not use. The golden rule is: “If you don’t need it, don’t use it!” This is the simplest and cheapest lesson with amongst the biggest savings. Apart from the above, the work also contributes to several other fields of scientific research: it helps in development of benchmarks from sub-hourly field data; it contributes apportionment of energy amongst sub-systems of HVAC, lighting and office equipment; it provides a picture from cooling dominated climates, which normally differs from the largely researched heating dominated climates; it contributes to development of diversity profiles necessary for improvement of simulation accuracy.