Predictive Heating Control and Perceived Thermal Comfort in a Norwegian Office Building

Abstract

An office building in Trondheim, Norway, was used as a case study to test the influence of Predictive Control (PC) for the optimization of energy use on the employees’ thermal comfort. A predictive control was implemented in the Building Energy Management System (BEMS) by operating on the supply temperature of the radiator circuit. A questionnaire was given to the employees to evaluate to what extent the operation of the predictive control influenced their perceived thermal comfort. Several factors known to influence employees’ satisfaction (such as office type, perceived noise level, level of control, perceived luminous environment, perceived indoor air quality, adaptation strategies, well-being) were investigated in the questionnaire. The evaluation shows that the occupants rated the perceived thermal comfort as equally good compared to the business-as-usual operation. This is an important finding toward the user acceptance of such predictive control schemes.

Keywords

• thermal comfort
• predictive heating control
• office building
• perceived control
• occupants’ satisfaction