Implementing Occupant Behaviour in the Simulation of Building Energy Performance and Energy Flexibility: Development of Co-Simulation Framework and Case Study

Occupant behaviour has a substantial impact on the prediction of building energy performance. To capture this impact, co-simulation is considered an effective approach. It is still a new method in need of more development. In this study, a co-simulation framework is established to couple EnergyPlus with Java via Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) using the EnergyPlusToFMU software package.

This method is applied to a case study of a single occupant office with control of lighting, plug load and thermostat. Two control scenarios are studied. These are occupancy and occupant behaviour based control (OC), and sensor based control (SBC) triggered by dynamic electricity price under demand side management (DSM) program.

The building energy performance in the OC scenario is then used as reference to evaluate the building energy (cost) saving and energy flexibility. This is an improvement of current studies on DSM and building energy flexibility, in which predefined user schedules are commonly used.