Importance of occupancy information when simulating energy demand of energy efficient house: A case study

During planning and design stages of energy efficient houses investor and designer deal with requirement to ensure very low energy consumption in operational stage of building life cycle. Any deviation appeared after building commissioning will result non-compliance with regulatory requirements. Currently, the energy simulations of the residential building do not provide the approach, which would help comprehensively evaluate differences of occupants' characteristics (age, behaviour, etc.), neither in energy performance certification methodologies nor in energy simulation software. The objective of study is to perform complex analysis of the effect of domestic occupancy profiles on the energy performance of energy efficient house and assess applicability of default DesignBuilder occupancy profiles at local conditions. Results show that the influence of the profile with 4 occupants (OP2) on overall primary energy demand for different cases is never exceeding 5% compared to default DesignBuilder profiles. The influence of households with 2 occupants (OP3, OP4) on overall primary energy demand varies from 14% to 21% compared to default profiles. The simulation results revealed that the use of different occupancy profiles correlates with the total energy performance of the building. Incorporation of occupancy information in energy simulations will improve the accuracy of the energy performance assessment.