SIMULATING OCCUPANTS' BEHAVIOR FOR ENERGY WASTE REDUCTION IN DWELLINGS: A MULTIAGENT METHODOLOGY

Abstract

Energy waste due to inhabitants' behavior in residential buildings has emerged as a potential research area due to the increasing worldwide population and growing energy needs. However, existing approaches for simulating energy consumption are mainly limited to office buildings and are based on static profiles. In this paper we propose a 4-step co-simulation methodology to assess how inhabitants' interactions with household appliances affect energy consumption. The approach is validated using a case study showing how human activities influence the energy consumption patterns of a refrigerator. The fridge was specifically chosen because it is a high energy-consuming appliance that is strongly affected by inhabitants' behaviors. In addition, modeling the fridge is nontrivial, and in choosing this appliance we show that it is possible to apply the approach to less complex appliances. A co-simulation approach is adopted with the fridge being physically modeled in Matlab and with human behavior being modeled in the Brahms language and simulation environment. The consumption distribution from the simulated scenario is compared with the actual distribution (using data from a consumption database), to find optimum values of tuning parameters with less than 10% variation. This methodology enables us to simulate how human behaviors affect energy appliance consumption.