Understanding Residential Occupant Cooling Behaviour through Electricity Consumption in Warm-Humid Climate

Abstract

According to the India Energy Security Scenario 2047, the number of residential air conditioner (A/C) units may increase seven-fold by 2037 as compared to 2017. Also, the related energy consumption might increase four times in the next two decades, according to India’s National Cooling Action Plan. Therefore, the study of occupant cooling behaviour is essential to reduce and manage the significant electricity demand, helping to formulate and implement climate-specific cooling policies, and to adopt low-energy and low-cost technologies at mass-market scale. The study aims to analyse residential electricity consumption in order to investigate occupant behaviour, especially for thermal comfort by using space cooling and mechanical ventilation technologies. Among the five climate zones in India, this study focuses on the occupant behaviour in a warm-humid climate using Auroville as a case study, where climate analysis of the past 30 years demonstrated progression towards unprecedented warmer weather in the last five years. In this study, electricity consumption data from 18 households (flats) were monitored for seven months (November 2018–June 2019). The study also elaborated the limitations faced while monitoring and proposed a data filling methodology to create a complete daily profile for analysing occupant behaviour through electricity consumption. The results of the data-driven approach demonstrated the characteristics and complexities in occupant behaviour and insight on the operation of different technologies to attain thermal comfort in residential buildings in an increasingly warming climate.

Radiant Conditioning Retrofitting for Residential Buildings

“…As mentioned above, air conditioners are the most commonly used systems providing thermal comfort for residential housing in various world regions, such as China and the USA, while the demand for air conditioners is dramatically increasing in China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil [20]. The most frequently applied conditioning systems within the residential sector in Australia include the window-mounted or wall-mounted direct expansion A/C unit (Figure 1) [5].…”

“…In other words, they condition the air in a space. Indonesia, and Brazil [20]. The most frequently applied conditioning systems within the residential sector in Australia include the window-mounted or wall-mounted direct expansion A/C unit (Figure 1) [5].…”

A hybrid system of data-driven approaches for simulating residential energy demand profiles

“…Missing data for all the three portfolios were infilled using a logical algorithm developed by the authors and is detailed elsewhere (Debnath et al 2020).…”

Italian Household Load Profiles: A Monitoring Campaign

“…Similarly, Sousa et al [39] highlighted how high-resolution load profiling data are fundamental for neural-network-based forecasting models, and they proposed a day-ahead load profile prediction exploiting such data; moreover, the segmentation of consumers was carried out through clustering algorithms, although sociodemographic variables were not taken into account. Indeed, consumer viewpoints should be investigated in such models, thus taking into account the effects of different types of households' behaviors and characteristics on the load profiles [19,40,41]. In this regard, Fischer et al [21] developed a bottom-up method to generate a stochastic high resolution of households' electric load profiles by including socioeconomic features to better estimate behaviors regarding different types of families; moreover, seasonal effects on load profile were taken into account, using a statistical survey as input database.…”