On the Utility of Occupancy Sensing for Managing HVAC Energy in Large Zones

Abstract

HVAC control strategies that exploit temporal variations in zone occupancy have been well studied. Occupancy can also vary spatially within a zone, especially during off-design operating conditions. We complement prior work by studying the usefulness of sensing occupancy information at different spatial resolutions in large zones served by multiple AHUs. As conventional PID controllers cannot utilize this information effectively, we propose a new control strategy and study the usefulness of sensing. We observe that utility of sensing occupancy at finer spatial resolutions is higher when the actual spatial heterogeneity in occupancy is higher.