Gu, Y (2011) The impacts of real-time knowledge based personal lighting control on energy consumption, user satisfaction and task performance in offices. PhD thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
Abstract
Current building design and engineering practices emphasizing on energy conservation can be improved further by developing methods focusing on building occupants' needs and interests in conservation. Specifically, the resulting energy effective building performance improvements cannot reach the desired goals, if the resulting indoor environmental conditions do not meet thermal, visual and air quality needs of the occupants. To meet both energy conservation and human performance requirements simultaneously requires to give the occupants information regarding indoor environmental qualities and energy implications of possible individual decisions. This requires that building control components and systems must enable occupants to understand how the building operates and how their own actions meet both their needs and the energy and environmental goals of the building project. The goal of the research and experiments of this dissertation is to explore if real-time information regarding visual comfort requirements to meet a variety of tasks and to simultaneously conserve energy, improves occupant behavior to meet both objectives. Two workplaces in Robert L. Preger Intelligent Workplace were equipped to test the performance of 60 invited participants in conducting computer based tasks and a paper based task, under three difference lighting controls: (1) Centralized lighting control with no user choice; (2) User control of (a) blind positions for daylight shading, (b) ceiling based lighting fixture luminance output level, (c) task lighting: on/off; (3) User control the three components (as listed under point 2 above), with provided simultaneous information regarding energy and related CO2 emissions implications, appropriate light levels meeting tasks requirements, and best choices in order to meet both task requirements and energy conservation goals/objectives. The main findings of the experiments are that real-time information (listed under point 3 above) enables users to meet the visual quality requirements for both computer tasks and the paper task, and to conserve significant amounts of electricity for lighting. Furthermore, the 60 invited participants were asked to identify the importance of the four types of provided information tested in point 3 above. While individual users identified the importance of different information categories, the overall assessment were considered to be significant. Keywords: Individual control, knowledge based manual control, daylight, blind, ceiling luminaire, task light
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Hartkopf, V |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | air quality; building design; building performance; conservation; energy conservation; energy consumption |
| Index terms: | shading, building control, environmental conditions, user satisfaction, building performance, lighting control, experiment, dissertation, visual comfort, real-time information, energy conservation, occupant behaviour, conservation, energy consumption, human-performance, air quality, indoor environmental quality, building design, CO2 emissions |
| Subjects: | health safety and environment, quality assurance, climate science, health behaviours and lifestyles, human factors and perception, client relations, research dissemination and communication, architectural design, environmental science, environmental policy, energy efficiency, building design, environmental health, environmental engineering, data management, air quality, data collection methods, energy systems |
| Topics: | Stakeholder Management, Research Practice, Design Practice, Digital Applications, Sustainability, Health and Safety, Quality Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here