Correlation between occupants and energy consumption

Although it is widely acknowledged that occupants play a critical role in building energy consumption, the characteristics of occupants are not well-represented in building simulation. Many statistic and data-mining technologies have been applied to develop a reliable occupant model. In contrast, rather than attempting to develop the occupant model, this study aims to investigate the correlation between the occupant behavior and energy consumption based on a series of experiments. First, this paper discusses the randomness of the occupants' presence and behavior. The degree of randomness was verified using a Normalized Cumulative Periodogram (NCP) based on a random walk hypothesis. In addition, the correlation between occupant and energy consumption was investigated using the wavelet coherence. This study shows that, while the occupants' presence has a randomness, it is not strongly correlated to the energy consumption. The occupants' active action to control a heating/cooling system (turn on/off) is correlated to the energy consumption. In contrast to the occupant's presence, the occupants' active action does not follow the random walk, and it has no particular frequency. This means that it is difficult to predict the control action of occupants with a specific time interval.