Importance of occupancy information for building climate control

This paper investigates the potential of using occupancy information to realize a more energy efficient building climate control. The study focuses on Swiss office buildings equipped with Integrated Room Automation (IRA), i.e. the integrated control of Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning (HVAC) as well as lighting and blind positioning of a building zone or room. To evaluate the energy savings potential, different types of occupancy information are used in a Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework, which is well-suited for this study due to its ability to readily include occupancy information in the control.