Effects of building occupancy on indicators of energy efficiency

Aapo Huovila, Pekka Tuominen, Miimu Airaksinen*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    22 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The potential to reduce energy consumption in buildings is high. The design phase of the building is very important. In addition, it is vital to understand how to measure the energy efficiency in the building operation phase in order to encourage the right efficiency efforts. In understanding the building energy efficiency, it is important to comprehend the interplay of building occupancy, space efficiency, and energy efficiency. Recent studies found in the literature concerning energy efficiency in office buildings have concentrated heavily on the technical characteristics of the buildings or technical systems. The most commonly used engineering indicator for building energy efficiency is the specific energy consumption (SEC), commonly measured in kWh/m2 per annum. While the SEC is a sound way to measure the technical properties of a building and to guide its design, it obviously omits the issues of building occupancy and space efficiency. This paper studies existing energy efficiency indicators and introduces a new indicator for building energy efficiency which takes into account both space and occupancy efficiency.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number628
    Number of pages19
    JournalEnergies
    Volume10
    Issue number5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2017
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Funding

    This study was part of VTT Innovation program Ingrid, Intelligent energy networks, and smart districts. This study was funded by the Academy of Finland, Strategic Research Council, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation Tekes and the RYM Ltd. PRE program NewWoW. Smart Energy Transition project (293405) thanks the Strategic Research Council in collaboration with the Academy of Finland for their continuing support for the project.

    Keywords

    • building energy efficiency
    • indicators
    • performance

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