Nationwide HVAC Energy-Saving Potential Quantification for Office

Buildings with Occupant-Centric Controls in Various Climates

Zhihong Pang1, Yan Chen2, Jian Zhang2, Zheng O’Neill*1, Hwakong Cheng3, Bing Dong4
1
J. Mike Walker '66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College
Station, TX
2
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA
3
Taylor Engineering, Alameda, CA
4
Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

* Corresponding Author, Email: ZONeill@tamu.edu, Phone: (+1)979-845-4931

Abstract:

The occupant-centric control (OCC) is receiving an increasing attention since it could reduce
building heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system energy consumptions while not
affecting the occupant thermal comfort. This paper aims to quantify the nationwide energy-saving
potential of implementing the occupant-centric HVAC controls in typical office buildings. First,
the medium office and large office from the Department of Energy (DOE) Commercial Prototype
Building Models (CPBM) were enhanced to have detailed layouts and dynamic occupancy
schedules. Then, a comprehensive simulation plan was created by incorporating the multiple zone-
level and system-level occupant-centric building HVAC controls recommended by the updated
ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2019 and ASHRAE Guideline 36 – 2018. Three control scenarios with
different occupancy sensing methods were identified in this simulation plan. A nation-wide
parametric analysis, which includes two building types, three occupancy sensing scenarios, two
building code versions, and 16 U.S. climate zones, was carried out. The simulation results of the
key control variables and HVAC energy consumption suggest that generally, both the occupancy
presence sensor and occupant counting sensor could achieve energy savings for the office
buildings in the majority of the scenarios. However, compared with the occupancy presence
sensor, which could support both the temperature setpoint reset and operational breathing zone
airflow rate reset for the unoccupied zones, the occupant counting sensor only brings a marginal
benefit. Besides, a higher HVAC energy-saving ratio could be achieved in the heating-dominated
zone, since the energy reduction brought with the minimum outdoor airflow rate reset is stronger
in the heating mode.
Key Words: Occupant-centric controls; Large-scale simulation; EnergyPlus; Demand-
Controlled Ventilation
1 Introduction and background
1.1 Background and literature reviews
The building sector is responsible for up to 40% of the total energy consumption and greenhouse
gas emissions in the world. These ratios are even projected to be continuously increasing in the

1
future with the growing urbanization and economic development occurring on a worldwide scale
[1]. Despite the significant contribution to energy usage, 90% of the building heating, ventilation,
and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are estimated not to operate efficiently, which causes a
considerable amount of energy waste and financing costs [2].
Occupants have been widely recognized as a driving factor of the building energy consumption by
various studies in recent decades [3]. On the one hand, the primary goal of the buildings is to
provide an acceptable indoor environment for human beings to live in and shelter from the extreme
weather and ensure the quality of life [4]. In this process, a huge amount of energy is consumed to
maintain a stable built environment with acceptable indoor air quality and satisfactory thermal,
visual, and acoustic comfort conditions [5]. On the other hand, the occupants influence the design
and operation of the buildings both by their passive presence and active behaviors. These two
effects together impact the energy performance of the buildings and their mechanical and HVAC
systems [6].
In spite of the recognition of the occupants’ significant role on energy consumption, in most of the
buildings, especially the commercial buildings, HVAC systems are operated based on a static pre-
assumed occupancy schedule, which may differ dramatically from the reality [7]. These deviations
from the design occupancy could result in wasted energy [8] and occupant discomfort. Hence,
there is a growing interest in integrating occupant behavior with the HVAC operation and control
processes to enhance building energy efficiency.
Occupant-centric control (OCC), of which the definition may vary from case to case, is attracting
significant research interests from both the academia and industry in this context. OCC could
address the contradiction between the goals of reducing building energy consumption and
maintaining the occupant’s needs (e.g., thermal comfort). Yang and Becerik-Gerber [8]
summarized that their basic idea of OCC is adjusting the HVAC operation schedule when the zone
or the building is vacant. O’Brien et al. [4] defined the OCC as a control methodology which is
able to incorporate the sensing of indoor environmental quality and the various occupant behaviors
(e.g., occupancy presence, occupants’ interactions with buildings, etc.) with HVAC control
algorithms to achieve the purpose of both high levels of energy efficiency and occupant comfort,
while maintaining the usability and desired control. Naylor et al. [9] extended this concept of OCC
into four groups, i.e., the real-time reactive control to the occupancy presence, the personalized
control to the individual preference, the control catered to the individual behaviors, and the
predictive control based on the occupancy presence/behavior prediction models. Park et al. [10]
further simplified the classification of OCCs into two sub-categories: the occupancy-based control
which adjusts the system operation merely based on the presence/absence of the occupants; and
the behavior-based control which utilizes the human-building interactions in conjunction with
various environmental measurements to determine the system operation.
The last decades have seen growing prosperity in OCC research and applications in buildings. On
the one hand, the occupancy sensing accuracy is continuously increasing with new technologies
emerging [11]. On the other hand, the new OCC algorithms and logics continue to be brought up

2
for achieving better control. To demonstrate the energy-saving potential of OCC, many case
studies have been conducted from the perspectives of both computer simulation and field
implementation.
1.1.1 Simulation-based case studies
Building performance simulation plays a significant role in analyzing and understanding the
various building control algorithms and energy efficiency measures (EEMs) due to the inherent
complexity of the building system [6]. A well-designed simulation could not only show
meaningful results in terms of building energy and occupant comfort, but also provide insightful
guidance on the experimental implementation of control algorithms in controlled labs and/or real
buildings. The majority of the OCC case studies in the past decade were based on simulation tools,
as summarized by Park et al. [10].
For instance, Zhang et al. [12] conducted a nationwide simulation-based study to quantify the
energy savings potential from using occupancy sensors in office buildings. Two sensing
technologies (i.e., occupancy presence sensing and occupant counting) were investigated for the
lighting system and Variable Air Volume (VAV) system. The simulation results suggested that the
energy savings ratio could vary significantly across the different climate zones in the U.S., e.g., as
high as 19% of the total energy consumption could be saved in Fairbanks, AK, while this ratio is
only 5% for Miami, FL.
O’Neill et al. [13, 14] presented a novel method to implement the CO2 based demand-controlled
ventilation (DCV) through dynamically resetting zonal minimum airflow rate within the context
of ventilation rate procedure (VRP) per requested by American Society of Heating, Refrigerating
and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard 62.1 in the ASHRAE RP-1747 project. The
CO2 concentration in the zone was used as an indicator for calculating the required ventilation rate.
An EnergyPlus and CONTAM co-simulation-based study was conducted to investigate the energy-
saving ratio of such a method in one office building for four locations, i.e., Miami, FL, Atlanta,
GA, Oakland, CA, and Chicago, IL. The results suggested that the proposed RP-1747 DCV control
logic could lead to 9% to 33% HVAC energy savings compared with the ASHRAE 62.1 – 2016
baselines.
Dong and Lam [15] implemented a complex wireless sensor network in a solar house located in
Pittsburg, PA. This wireless environmental sensor network was able to measure the temperature,
relative humidity, lighting, acoustics, and motion with a sampling time of one minute. Multiple
statistical methods, e.g., Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM), Hidden Markov Model (HMM), etc.,
were then applied to predict the occupants’ number and durations in the space. The testing results
showed that this hybrid model was able to achieve an accuracy of 88% for the occupancy
prediction in the heating season and 92% in the cooling season. By incorporating this occupancy
prediction model and a weather forecasting model into a nonlinear model-predictive control
(MPC) for HVAC operations, 30% and 18% energy savings were achieved in winter and summer,
respectively.

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Goyal et al. [16] investigated three OCC strategies of different complexities for the energy
efficiency of building HVAC systems on the zone-level. The controls ranged from the simple
occupant-based DCV to the advanced supply airflow rate optimization based on the MPC and
occupancy prediction. The energy simulation result suggested that the optimization control
method, which takes the zone air temperature, zone air humidity, occupant prediction, outdoor
weather prediction, and actuator capabilities into consideration, could achieve as high as 37%
HVAC energy savings in Gainesville, FL.
Erickson et al. [17] implemented a 16-node wireless camera sensor network to collect the actual
occupancy data in a large multi-function building in Merced, CA. The sensing system could
achieve an accuracy of 80% for occupancy measurement. This data was then fed into an eQUEST-
based energy model to calculate the energy savings from OCC. The result suggested that about
14% HVAC energy savings could be achieved in this campus building.
Although there have been many existing simulation-based OCC studies, there still remain some
challenges unsolved. For instance, some researchers only adopted the simple OCCs in their case
studies (e.g., the temperature setback control), which may severely underestimate the energy-
saving potential. Also, the control strategies implemented in these studies vary from one to
another; hence it is hard to comprehensively and objectively evaluate the energy-saving
performances. Besides, the simplified zoning plan and static occupant schedules in some of the
studies cannot represent the reality, and thus may affect the credibility and reference of the
simulation results. Lastly, except for [12], the majority of the reviewed case studies only cover
limited climate zones in their simulation plan. While some prior studies in the open literature may
be good enough for the feasibility evaluation of OCCs for a specific region, the lack of other
climate zones makes it impossible to estimate the energy-saving potential of OCCs on a nationwide
scale, which is extremely important from the perspectives of policy making and building codes
development/enhancement.
1.1.2 Experiment-based case studies
While the computational simulation is convenient and powerful, the field testing has some
competitive advantages to scale up the OCC in real buildings. The field testing is able to
incorporate some key factors into the design and implementation of OCC: 1) the real occupant
behaviors and human-building interactions are utilized, 2) the building thermal dynamics and
responses in reality are considered, 3) the actual performances of the local controllers, occupancy
sensors, and various HVAC sensors are not neglected, and 4) occupancy sensors and OCC
algorithms are integrated with the building automation system (BAS).
Sun et al. [18] implemented a CO2-based in-situ study to validate the adaptive DCV in a multi-
zone office building in Hong Kong. In this study, the CO2 sensors were used to calculate the
occupant numbers within the space by comparing the average CO2 concentrations of the supply
airflow and indoor space. The results suggested that this DCV could save 55.8% energy for outdoor
air ventilation compared with the non-occupancy-sensing baseline.

4
Bharathan et al. [19] presented and implemented an occupancy detection system leveraging the
existing Wi-Fi infrastructure and its connectivity with the smartphones carried by the occupants in
an academic building in San Diego, CA. The detection accuracy of this system could be as high as
86%. The occupancy information was then used for the OCC of the HVAC system and the result
indicated a 17.8% saving for the total HVAC electricity consumption.
Peng et al. [20] installed the motion-based occupancy sensors in 11 offices of a commercial
building in Singapore to investigate the energy savings of occupant-centric temperature setpoint
reset. A k-nearest neighbor algorithm was used to predict the occupancy presence based on the
historical data, so the temperature setpoint could be switched between four modes (i.e., the normal
model, the light setback, the deep setback, and the economy mode). The results indicated a 7–52%
cooling energy savings during the testing period.
Besides, some researchers investigated incorporating the occupant thermal comfort votes into
building HVAC operations. For instance, Pritoni et al. [21] introduced a participatory thermal
feedback system, TherMOOstat, which enabled the students to submit thermal feedback any time
from any building on the central UC Davis campus. This system was then used in combination
with the Wi-Fi thermostat of a small office building to investigate the potential of the thermal votes
in actual building control. The testing results showed that more than 30% gas usage and 20% fan
power could be saved over the traditional schedule after the weather normalization.
Compared with the simulation-based studies, the number of field testing of OCC research is
relatively smaller. Several reasons could contribute to this phenomenon. Firstly, the installation of
some types of occupancy sensors (e.g., some camera-based sensors) in the building could raise a
privacy concern, which may thus increase the difficulty level of the approval of the experiment.
Secondly, as noted in [10], the building facility manager may be reluctant to adopt such kind of
controls since the installation of the various new occupancy sensors and environmental sensors
may increase the complexity of the original BAS, and sometimes may even cause malfunctions.
Thirdly, the purchase of new sensors and retrofit of the original systems are expensive. Hence, a
computational simulation is usually recommended before the field implementation to quantify the
energy savings potential of OCC and facilitate the decision-making [10].
Furthermore, Park et al. [10] summarized that the existing field implementation based OCC studies
also suffered from the following limitations, e.g., the duration of the testing period is too short, the
OCCs were only implemented in a part of the building, the location of the testing buildings was
skewed regionally toward North America and Europe, the building types of the case studies were
mainly academic buildings and office buildings, etc. Due to these reasons, it is impossible to make
a fair comparison between these case studies.
1.2 Objective, novelty, and organization
Despite the many existing simulation and experimental studies, the energy-saving potential of
OCC is far from clear. As summarized in Section 1.1, on the one hand, the energy-saving
quantification based on the in-situ experiments suffer from various inherent limitations and

5
challenges; on the other hand, there lacks a systematic and comprehensive simulation analysis to
include the various uncertainties of building energy modeling into account to facilitate a fair
comparison, e.g., the climate condition, the building code version, the OCC algorithms, etc.
The objective of this study is to quantify the energy-saving potential of the OCC for the HVAC
system in office buildings on a nationwide scale in the U.S. The office building was chosen due to
three reasons. Firstly, office buildings account for approximately 17% of the total non-domestic
area and about 18% of the energy consumption within the commercial sector in the U.S [22], which
makes it a representative candidate for OCC research. Secondly, existing studies show that the
actual occupancy schedules and occupancy density could be highly dynamic and much different
from the recommended values in the building codes [7, 23, 24]. Mahdavi et al. [25] collected the
occupancy data for 48 offices of three campus buildings in Austria. The results suggested that the
mean occupancy of these offices was below 60% of the design value for most of the observation
period. This stochastic nature could help realize the energy-saving potential of the OCC
algorithms. Lastly, office building is one of the building types which attract the most attention in
building occupant-centric HVAC research. Park et al. [10] reviewed tens of case studies and found
that nearly 40% of the field implementations of occupant-centric building controls were conducted
in office buildings.
In this study, the medium and large office buildings from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s)
Commercial Prototype Building Models (CPBM) were selected to represent the typical office
buildings. Multiple zone-level and system-level occupant-centric building HVAC controls
recommended by the ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2019 [26] and ASHRAE Guideline 36 – 2018 [27]
were adopted to comprehensively account for the energy savings potential. Furthermore, a
parametric analysis which incorporates all the 16 climate zones in the U.S. and two versions of
building codes (i.e., ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2004 [28] and 90.1 – 2016 [29]) was carried out to
investigate the impacts of climatic conditions and building vintages on the energy savings. A
hybrid simulation infrastructure was developed for the parametric analysis and the consequent
Quality Assurance (QA)/Quality Control (QC) work.
To the best knowledge of the authors, this study is the first simulation-based research which takes
all the U.S. climates zones, different building code versions, multiple occupancy sensor types, and
a complete selection of occupant-centric HVAC controls into account. The novelty of this study is
summarized as follows:
• This study developed a comprehensive simulation infrastructure in which all the 16
International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) climate zones in the U.S. were included,
so the energy savings of OCC could be quantified on a large nationwide scale.
• Different versions of ASHRAE Standard 90.1 were selected to investigate the impacts of
building vintage on the energy savings potential of OCCs.
• Multiple zone-level and system-level occupant-centric HVAC controls were selected from
the updated ASHRAE Standards and control guidelines. OCC strategies include the zone

6
 temperature setpoint reset, the zonal minimum supply airflow rate reset, and the system
minimum outdoor airflow rate reset, etc. Hence, the savings potential of occupancy sensors
could be fully realized compared with some of the existing studies, which only considered
a few of them.
• A complete list of occupancy sensing technologies covering three sensing scenarios was
investigated in this study, i.e., no occupancy sensing, occupancy presence sensing, and
occupant counting sensing. Unlike most of the existing studies which only used the
occupancy presence sensor for the temperature setback control and/or automatic light
control, this study also investigated the feasibility of applying such sensors to adjust the
zone-level and system-level ventilation rates.
• Python scripts were developed to automatically create new and scalable EnergyPlus objects
for OCC implementation.
The result of this nationwide simulation research is expected to provide a practical guidance and a
reference to the vast majority of emergy policy makers, building owners, facility managers, HVAC
engineers, and building scientists.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The building energy model development and
enhancements are elaborated in Section 2. Section 3 introduces the OCC HVAC control strategies
which are adopted in this simulation-based study. Section 4 describes the simulation infrastructure
being developed for the nationwide simulation. Section 5 presents the detailed time-series and
energy consumption analysis of the simulation results. The conclusions and future work are
discussed in Section 6.
2 Model development and enhancements
The medium office and large office from the CPBM [30, 31] were selected in this study to represent
the vast office building stock in the U.S. Some enhancements were made to the original models to
have detailed zoning plan and dynamic occupancy schedules.
2.1 Building energy model rezoning
The original medium office and large office in CPBM have a simplified five-zone per floor zoning
plan. As illustrated in Figure 1, each above-the-ground floor only contains four perimeter zones
and one/two core zone(s), which makes it hard to capture the typical dynamics of daily occupant
movement inside the buildings, e.g., attending a meeting, taking a lunch break, etc. To better
account for the dynamic occupancy variations, the selected original CPBMs were rezoned to have
a detailed floor plan.

7
Figure 1. The zoning plans of (a) medium office; (b) large office – basement; and (c) large office
– other floors (Note that the scaling ratio is different for the two models)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) [32, 33] developed some updated OpenStudio office
prototype models based on the original CPBM. The updated models allocate the detailed space
types and areas to the original prototype models to have a detailed floor plan. The model rezoning
of this study used their work as the starting point with further improvements to better capture the
occupancy stochasticity. For example, the original large enclosed offices in their models were
further divided into several smaller zones in this study. Peng et al. [34] installed motion sensors in
six offices of a building in Singapore, including two multi-occupant offices and four individual
offices. The results showed that the observed occupancy level of the four individual offices was
obviously much lower than that of the two multi-occupant offices during the real operation. This
pattern was also observed in [20]. Hence, considering that the smaller enclosed offices in the new
rezoned models only hold two occupants each and would have more unoccupied periods, this
modification helps capture the energy-saving potential of the small individual office in reality.
The new zoning plans adopted in this study were illustrated in Figure 2 and Figure 3. The outlook
of the rezoned medium office and large office building energy models in SketchUp were presented
in Figure 4. The original large zones in CPBM were divided into multiple smaller zones, with each
small zone representing a specific space type. This makes it possible to capture the various
occupant behaviors in buildings.
Following the change in architectural plan, consequent modifications in building energy models
were also made, e.g., adding thermostat objects and VAV terminal objects. The details are not
elaborated here.

8
 Figure 2. The zoning plan of the refined medium office model after zoning enhancement [35]

Figure 3. The zoning plan of the refined large office model after zoning enhancement [35]

Figure 4. The outlook of the (a) medium office and (b) large office building energy models in
SketchUp
2.2 Dynamic occupancy schedules
The original CPBMs do not consider the occupant’s random movement inside the building; hence,
the default occupancy schedules are static and homogeneous. To overcome this issue, a set of
dynamic and stochastic occupancy schedules were generated to bring random and realistic
fluctuations to the static occupancy schedules.

9
The Occupancy Simulator developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) [36]
was used to serve the need. This tool incorporates several validated occupant behavior models. It
can create both building-level and space-level occupancy schedules as well as an individual
person’s movement by pre-defined occupant types and space types. In this study, the baseline
occupancy density was specified following the ASHRAE Standard 62.1 – 2019 [26]. The arrival
and departure time, the weekly attendance variations, and the meeting events were specified
based on engineering judgments. . The arrival and departure time, the weekly variations of the
attendance rate, and the meeting events were specified based on engineering judgments. Some of
the assumptions were summarized in Table 1.
Table 1 The assumptions for generating occupancy schedules
DAY ASSUMPTION
Mon. – Thu. HVAC operation: 7 AM – 9 PM;
All the employees will go to work from 7 AM – 9 PM but
the arrival and departure time tends to vary for each of them.
Fri. HVAC operation: 7 AM – 9 PM;
Only half of the employees will go to work from 7 AM – 9
PM.
Sat. HVAC operation: 7 AM – 4 PM;
Only 20% of the employees will go to work from 7 AM – 4
PM.
Sun. & Holidays HVAC system always off;
None of the employees will go to work.

The occupancy schedule was generated for each building on a weekly basis, i.e., a weekly schedule
was iterated to represent the whole year. The schedule is unique for each zone, which fully
demonstrates the stochastic nature of occupant behaviors. Some sample schedules of
representative zones were presented in Figure 5 to illustrate the trends and variations. As discussed
by Chen et al. [36] , the current version of Occupancy Simulator suffered from two obvious
limitations, which may lead to deviations from the reality. First, the simulator did not consider the
personal absence during workdays (e.g., sick leaves, vacations, work from home days, or business
trips). Second, the stochastic model of meeting events was only based on the Google Calendar
record data of one typical meeting room, and hence may lack the representativeness. To resolve
these issues, we assumed that half of the employees would work from home on Fridays, and four
fifths of employees would stay at home on Saturdays, to more realistically reflect the personal
absence over a typical work week. Besides, we changed the setting of the meeting events based on
the assumed maximum capacity of the conference room as well.
It should be noted that the dynamic occupancy schedules used in this study were created using the
LBNL’s Occupancy Simulator with some engineering judgements; hence any change made to the
model of Occupancy Simulator and/or assumptions of engineering judgements may impact on the
occupancy profiles and consequent energy-saving ratio. As noted by Hong et al. [3] and Peng et
al. [20], the dynamic variations in occupancy schedule help demonstrate the energy savings of the
OCC; the energy savings potential was generally inversely correlated with the occupancy level of
the testing rooms.
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 Figure 5. The sample occupancy schedules of (a) a typical open office; (b) a typical enclosed
office; (c) a typical conference room; and (d) the whole building for the large office model
2.3 Other parameters
The details about the building energy models, e.g., the building area and floors, the building
envelope, the HVAC system configuration, are not presented in this paper. This information is
available in the scorecards [30] and reports by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
[31, 37]. This paper is rather focusing on OCC strategies and associated savings.
3 Occupant-centric HVAC control strategies
3.1 Occupant sensing scenarios
There are many available occupancy sensing technologies for building applications [38] as
reviewed by Dong et al., e.g., the ultrasonic sensor, passive infrared sensor, occupant counting
camera, Bluetooth based occupant counting system, mobile-positioning based occupant counting,
etc. These sensors were generally classified into two categories in this study: the occupancy
presence sensor, which only detects the occupied status (occupied or not occupied), and occupant
counting sensor, which tells the actual number of occupants. Hence, in this study, three simulation
scenarios were defined to identify the different sensing capabilities: Baseline Case with no
occupancy sensing, Advanced Case I with occupancy presence sensing, and Advanced Case II
with occupant counting sensing.
The sensing capabilities of the three simulation cases are illustrated in Figure 6 by using a
simplified example, which includes three zones. As shown, Baseline Case always operates under
the assumption that the building and spaces are fully occupied at their design occupancy level.
Advanced Case I adjusts its operation based on the real-time occupancy presence/absence status
but assumes the zone occupancy is at the design level when any occupancy is detected. Advanced
Case II, which detects the occupant number of each zone, is considered the most advanced case.

11
Figure 6. Occupancy sensing capabilities of the baseline case and two advanced OCC cases [39,
40]
3.2 Occupant-centric HVAC control strategies for single duct VAV systems
Multiple occupant-centric HVAC controls from ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2019 [26] and
ASHRAE Guideline 36-2018 [27] were selected in this study. Generally, they were categorized
into two levels: zone-level and system-level. The zone-level OCC includes occupancy standby
temperature control, occupied standby ventilation control, and zone minimum primary airflow
reset; while the system-level OCC is mainly the system minimum outdoor air intake reset. The
single-duct VAV system is probably the most common HVAC system type for commercial
buildings in the U.S. We use it with the occupant counting sensor as an example to explain the
control strategies in the following sections.
3.2.1 Occupied standby temperature control
According to ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2019 [26], a zone is defined to be in the occupied-standby
mode when it is scheduled to be occupied but an occupancy sensor indicates no occupants are
within the zone. For zones with occupancy sensors, when the zone enters the occupied-standby
mode, the zone active heating/cooling setpoint must be set back at least 0.5 °C.
In this study, a 1 °C setback and a 2 °C setback were used for the offices and conference rooms,
respectively, during the occupied standby mode. These setback temperatures are assumed to bring
more energy savings potential without affecting occupant comfort too much [41].
3.2.2 Zone minimum primary airflow reset
3.2.2.1 Zone occupied standby ventilation control
Occupancy presence based ventilation control is allowed by ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2019 [26].
When a zone enters the occupied-standby mode, the ventilation does not need to be provided,
which could allow the zone minimum primary airflow to be reset down to zero.
3.2.2.2 Zone minimum primary airflow reset
The zone air distribution effectiveness (𝐸𝑧 ) is defined as a variable that evaluates how effectively
the air distribution system uses the supply air to condition the indoor space for an acceptable air
quality. As defined in ASHRAE Standard 62.1 – 2019 [42], 𝐸𝑧 is typically affected by two factors,
i.e., the heating/cooling mode of the supply air, and the air distribution configuration. In this study,

12
𝐸𝑧 is dynamically calculated according to Table 6.2.2.2 in ASHRAE Standard 62.1 – 2019 [42],
i.e., 1.0 and 0.8 for ceiling supply and ceiling return of the cool air and the warm air respectively.
According to the VRP in ASHRAE Standard 62.1, the breathing zone outdoor airflow (OA),
i.e., 𝑉𝑏𝑧 , is determined based on space type, occupancy level, and floor areas, as defined in
Equation (1). 𝐴𝑧 is the floor area, and 𝑃𝑧 is the zone population. The zone OA (i.e., 𝑉𝑜𝑧 ) is
calculated based on 𝑉𝑏𝑧 and 𝐸𝑧 , as defined in Equation (2).
The Simplified Procedure for 𝑉𝑝𝑧−𝑚𝑖𝑛 reset recommended by the latest ASHRAE Standard 90.1 –
2019 [26] and ASHRAE Guideline 36 – 2018 [27] is adopted in this study. This method requires
the zone minimum primary airflow rate (i.e., 𝑉𝑝𝑧−𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) to be determined directly based on 𝑉𝑜𝑧 , as
defined in Equation (3). Hence, when occupant counting sensors are available for HVAC systems,
𝑉𝑏𝑧 , 𝑉𝑜𝑧 , and 𝑉𝑝𝑧−𝑚𝑖𝑛 are all to be dynamically reset based on the real-time occupant number.
Besides, 𝑉𝑝𝑧−𝑚𝑖𝑛 of the non-occupancy sensing case could also be changed when 𝐸𝑧 varies with
the zone conditioning mode.
𝑉𝑏𝑧 = 𝑅𝑝 ∗ 𝑃𝑧 + 𝑅𝑎 ∗ 𝐴𝑧 (1)
𝑉𝑜𝑧 = 𝑉𝑏𝑧 /𝐸𝑧 (2)
𝑉𝑝𝑧−𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝑉𝑜𝑧 ∗ 1.5 (3)
Considering that the required VAV box control logic is the single maximum in ASHRAE Standard
90.1 – 2004 [28], a minimum damper position of 30% was applied when necessary to ensure that
the heating setpoint temperature was met for these cases.
3.2.3 System minimum outdoor airflow reset
3.2.3.1 System uncorrected outdoor airflow reset
According to the VRP, the system OA (i.e., 𝑉𝑜𝑡 ) is determined by Equation (4), where 𝑉𝑜𝑢 is the
system uncorrected OA, and 𝐸𝑣 is the system ventilation efficiency. The calculation of 𝑉𝑜𝑢_𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛
is defined in Equation (5). With occupant counting sensors available to the HVAC system,
operational 𝑉𝑜𝑢 is dynamically reset based on the real-time 𝑉𝑏𝑧 of each zone. Besides, operational
𝑉𝑜𝑢 could also be dynamically reset when the occupancy presence sensor is implemented, as
illustrated in Figure 6.
𝑉𝑜𝑡 = 𝑉𝑜𝑢 /𝐸𝑣 (4)
𝑉𝑜𝑢_𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛 = 𝐷 ∗ 𝛴𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠 (𝑅𝑝 ∗ 𝑃𝑧 ) + 𝛴𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠 (𝑅𝑎 ∗ 𝐴𝑧 ) (5)
3.2.3.2 System ventilation efficiency reset
There are two different calculation methods for 𝐸𝑣 . One is the Alternative Procedure, which is
defined in Appendix A of ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2019 and as presented in Equations (6), (7),
and (8), and the other one is the Simplified Procedure, which is defined in ASHRAE Standard
90.1-2019 and as presented in Equations (9) and (10). The variables 𝑉𝑝𝑠 , 𝑍𝑝𝑧_𝑚𝑎𝑥 , and 𝐷 represent

13
the sum of the zone primary airflow rate, the maximum zone outdoor airflow fraction, and the
assumed building occupancy diversity for design, respectively.
In this study, the Simplified Procedure is used to calculate the system ventilation efficiency in the
design condition, while the Alternative Procedure is used to reset the system ventilation efficiency
in operation. This is because compared with the Alternative Procedure, the Simplified Procedure
is considered to be simpler, and able to address the issue of significant differences in 𝑉𝑜𝑢
calculation in the design stage due to the different assumptions of the building occupancy diversity.
• Alternative Procedure
The Alternative Procedure works by adjusting 𝐸𝑣 based on 𝑋𝑠 and 𝑍𝑝𝑧_𝑚𝑎𝑥 . The 𝐸𝑣 based on
Alternative Procedure is denoted as 𝐸𝑣_𝐷𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑑 .
𝑋𝑠 = 𝑉𝑜𝑢 /𝑉𝑝𝑠 (6)
𝑍𝑝𝑧 = 𝑉𝑜𝑧 /𝑉𝑝𝑧 (7)
𝐸𝑣_𝐷𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑑 = 1 + (𝑉𝑜𝑢 /𝑉𝑝𝑠 ) − 𝑍𝑝𝑧_𝑚𝑎𝑥 (8)
• Simplified Procedure
The Simplified Procedure works by assuming the system ventilation efficiency based on the design
occupant diversity of the whole building. 𝐸𝑣 based on Alternative Procedure is denoted as
𝐸𝑣_𝑆𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 .
𝐸𝑣_𝑆𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 = 0.88 ∗ 𝐷 + 0.22 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐷 < 0.6 (9)
𝐸𝑣_𝑆𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 = 0.75 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐷 ≥ 0.60 (10)
3.2.3.3 System outdoor airflow rate reset
𝑉𝑜𝑡 is dynamically reset in operation based on the dynamic 𝑉𝑜𝑢 and 𝐸𝑣 for Advanced Case I & II,
as suggested in Equations (4), (5), and (8). Besides, another control is implemented in this study
for 𝑉𝑜𝑡 reset: according to ASHRAE Guideline 36 [43], the dynamic 𝑉𝑜𝑡 should be smaller than
the design 𝑉𝑜𝑡 during operation.
3.2.4 Lighting and equipment systems
Despite being potentially available to the HVAC and indoor climate control, the occupancy
sensing information could also be used to dynamically adjust the building lighting and plug system
operation [44]. Although there have been numerous studies investigating and recommending this
application [4, 45] , such occupant-centric Lighting Power Density (LPD) and Equipment Power
Density (EPD) reset are not considered in this study, since the focus of this research is to quantify
the direct HVAC energy-saving potential due to OCC.

14
3.3 Summary
The key control variables and strategies for Baseline Case, Advanced Case I, and Advanced Case
II described in Section 3.2 were summarized in Table 2. The ventilation system schematic for the
single-duct and single path VAV system is illustrated in Figure 7.
Please note that the equations in Figure 7 are only applied to Advanced Case II with the occupant
counting sensing. Nonetheless, the control schematic for Baseline Case and Advanced Case I could
be easily inferred based on Table 2 and Figure 6.

Figure 7. The multi-zone single-duct VAV ventilation requirement calculation control logic (use
occupant counting sensor as an example)

15
 Table 2. Key control variables and strategies for multi-zone VAV system
Control Parameters or
Baseline Advanced Case I Advanced Case II
Settings
Thermostat setpoint Heating/Cooling night setback temperature for building unoccupied mode1
Heating/Cooling design setpoint temperature for zone occupied mode2
Heating/Cooling design setpoint Heating/Cooling occupied standby setpoint temperature for zone
temperature for zone unoccupied mode3 unoccupied mode3
𝑉𝑏𝑧 𝑉𝑏𝑧 = 𝑅𝑝 ∗ 𝑃𝑧 + 𝑅𝑎 ∗ 𝐴𝑧 0 or Design 𝑉𝑏𝑧 0 or 𝑅𝑝 ∗ 𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 + 𝑅𝑎 ∗ 𝐴𝑧
𝐸𝑧 0.8 for heating, 1 for cooling
Design 𝑉𝑜𝑢 𝑉𝑜𝑢_𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛 = 𝐷 ∗ 𝛴𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠 (𝑅𝑝 ∗ 𝑃𝑧 ) + 𝛴𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠 (𝑅𝑎 ∗ 𝐴𝑧 )
Design 𝐷 0.6
Ventilation procedure for
Simplified Procedure
design 𝐸𝑣
Design 𝐸𝑣 0.75
Operation 𝑉𝑜𝑢 𝑉𝑜𝑢_𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 = 𝛴𝑂𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑑𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠 (𝑅𝑝 ∗ 𝑉𝑜𝑢_𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 = 𝛴𝑂𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑑𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠 (𝑅𝑝 ∗
Same as 𝑉𝑜𝑢_𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛
𝑃𝑧 ) + 𝛴𝑂𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑑𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠 (𝑅𝑎 ∗ 𝐴𝑧 ) 𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 ) + 𝛴𝑂𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑑𝑍𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠 (𝑅𝑎 ∗ 𝐴𝑧 )
Ventilation procedure for
Alternative Procedure
operation 𝐸𝑣
Operation 𝐸𝑣 𝐸𝑣_𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 = 1 + (𝑉𝑜𝑢 /𝑉𝑝𝑠 ) − 𝑍𝑝𝑧_𝑚𝑎𝑥

1Building unoccupied mode: The period when the whole building is assumed to be closed, e.g., at nighttime. This is a period pre-defined
during the design phase.
2 Zone occupied mode: The period when the whole building is assumed to be normally operated and the specific zone is also occupied.
3 Zone unoccupied mode: The period when the building is assumed to be normally operated, but the specific zone is unoccupied, e.g.,
the lunch break during which all the occupants in a given zone leave this zone.

16
4 Simulation infrastructure
4.1 OCC implementation with EnergyPlus EMS
The EnergyPlus built-in Energy Management System (EMS) module was used in this study to
implement the OCC strategies. EMS provides high-level and supervisory control to override
selected aspects of EnergyPlus modeling [46]. It allows the practitioners to design and implement
the customized advanced control sequence in the native environment of EnergyPlus with no need
to set a new environment for co-simulation. Via this module, the practitioners are allowed to read
the real-time values of the internal variables (i.e., the EMS sensors) during the computation, and
perturb the values of various control variables (i.e., the EMS actuators) by the pre-defined EMS
programs (i.e., the EMS programs).
The EMS basic working flow in this study is illustrated in Figure 8. Firstly, the EMS sensors, EMS
pre-defined global variables, and EMS control actuators were created and initialized at the
beginning of the simulation. Then, the EMS programs were called in sequence to overwrite the
values of the EMS control actuators in every timestep. In this process, some interim variables may
be created to avoid repeating computation.

Figure 8. The basic EMS framework for OCC implementation in this study
The EMS temperature setback program is illustrated in Figure 9. The EMS occupant sensor of
each zone and the scheduled HVAC operation status are needed to determine the active heating
and cooling temperature setpoints, as shown in Table 2. When the zone is in a building unoccupied
mode or a zone unoccupied mode, a(n) night-time/occupied-standby temperature setback is
implemented, which would decrease the building heating/cooling load.

Figure 9. The implementation of temperature setback control in EMS (use advanced cases as an
example).

17
A Python code was created to automate the process of populating the three control scenarios from
a baseline model. It should be noted that the “baseline model” here (referred to as baseline model)
is not the “Baseline Case without occupancy sensing” (referred to as the OCC baseline model) in
Figure 6. Actually, this baseline model is served as the starting-point model for the population of
the three OCC control scenarios. As described in Section 3.2, the calculation of the design 𝑉𝑝𝑧_𝑚𝑖𝑛
and design 𝑉𝑜𝑡 of the OCC baseline model follows the Simplified Procedure. In contrast, these
variables of the baseline model follow the Alternative Procedure. Besides, 𝐸𝑧 of the OCC baseline
model is dynamically reset based on each zone’s heating/cooling condition.
This Python code has five major parts:
• Reading the OA requirements, design occupant numbers, HVAC sizing capacities, etc.
from the simulation results of a baseline mode;
• Modifying the EnergyPlus model for control implementation (e.g., changing the zone
minimum airflow input method of VAV air terminal unit rom “constant” to “scheduled”);
• Creating new and scalable EnergyPlus objects (e.g., the system minimum OA schedules,
zone minimum primary airflow schedules) and EMS objects (e.g., EMS occupant
sensors, EMS thermostat actuators, EMS global variables, etc.) for control
implementation automatically;
• Creating the EMS subroutines and EMS programs for the three OCC control scenarios
following the simulation plan; and
• Generating the three executable building energy models.
4.2 Simulation infrastructure
4.2.1 Original PNNL CPBM simulation infrastructure
Composed by a set of scripts and files, PNNL CPBM Simulation Infrastructure was a building
energy modeling platform developed to support the progress indicator (PI) and determination
analysis for DOE’s Building Energy Codes Program [26, 28, 29, 42], and other large-scale building
energy code simulation analysis (e.g., IECC analysis [47] and New York State Stretch Code
analysis [48]). This infrastructure has been used to systematically analyze the energy impact of
different energy codes requirement for different building prototypes at different climate locations
[31, 49-51]. It was designed to handle the creation and processing of numerous EnergyPlus
simulations at the same time. There are four major components:
• Parameterization of prototype building models
• Automated EnergyPlus IDF creation
• Execution of the batch simulation process
• Aggregation of simulation result

18
Specifically, the parameterization of prototype building models is realized through two sets of
files: template and parm. The template file is a modified EnergyPlus IDF file with certain
EnergyPlus object fields replaced with placeholder variables. The values of the placeholder
variables are typically dependent on specific energy code requirements or climate zone and hence
are further specified in a separate parameter file (called parm file). In general, a template file
couples with a parm file for the parameterization purpose. The automation of EnergyPlus creation
is realized using a program called GPARM developed in Perl at PNNL. This program was used to
merge the values specified in the parm file with the template to create individual simulation cases.
One row in the parm table represents one simulation case.
Currently, the PNNL CPBM Simulation Infrastructure is able to support the simulation of all the
19 ASHRAE climate zones [52] and multiple versions of ASHRAE Standard 90.1 requirements
(from 2004 to 2019). However, due to the page limit, only 16 climates zones that exist in the U.S.
and two ASHRAE Standard 90.1 versions (i.e., 2004 and 2016) were included in this study.
Though all the representative cities of the 16 selected climate zones are located in the U.S., it’s
worth noting that the simulation results and conclusions of this study could be extended to far
beyond these cities, since the ASHARE climate zoning method could be applied to the majority
of the countries and regions in this world as well [52]. For instance, Shanghai, China is in Climate
Zone 3 and Amsterdam, Netherlands is in Climate Zone 5 by this method [52]. Besides, it should
be noted that the capabilities of the PNNL CPBM Simulation Infrastructure are far beyond the
above-mentioned applications. Due to the page limit, they were not elaborated here.
Table 3. The climate zones used for the parametric analysis of this study

Thermal Zone Thermal Climate Zone Name Representative City

1A Very Hot Humid Honolulu, HI

2A Hot Humid Tampa, FL
2B Hot Dry Tucson, AZ
3A Warm Humid Atlanta, GA
3B Warm Dry El Paso, TX
3C Warm Marine San Diego, CA
4A Mixed Humid New York City, NY
4B Mixed Dry Albuquerque, NM
4C Mixed Marine Seattle, WA
5A Cool Humid Buffalo, NY
5B Cool Dry Denver, CO
5C Cool Marine Port Angeles, WA
6A Cold Humid Rochester, MN
6B Cold Dry Great Falls, MT
7 Very Cold International Falls, MN
8 Subarctic/Arctic Fairbanks, AK

19
4.2.2 The hybrid simulation infrastructure
The Python script introduced in Section 4.1 was integrated into the original PNNL’s simulation
infrastructure to automatically generate the three control cases (as elaborated in Section 3) using a
baseline building energy model. This hybrid simulation infrastructure is as illustrated in Figure 10.
First, this system creates a starting point building energy model based on parm and template files
and executes a design day simulation to identify the size of the various equipment. Next, the sizing
results from this design day simulation are written into the starting point models create a baseline
model with properly sized equipment. Then, the Python scripts are used to populate this baseline
model to three control scenarios. This population procedure keeps the same equipment size. It
modifies the HVAC controls by changing the existing EnergyPlus object field specifications and
adding/modifying the EMS codes for advanced OCC strategies. The last part is to aggregate the
simulation result from each case to a summary file for the analysis.

20
Figure 10. Flow diagram of the simulation framework based on PNNL’s EnergyPlus simulation
infrastructure
4.3 Summary
In summary, the rezoned medium office and large office building energy models were populated
via a hybrid simulation infrastructure. Each building model includes 3*2*16=96 cases which are
composed by the following parameter variations:
• 16 ASHRAE climate zones.

21
 • Two versions of ASHRAE Standard – 90.1 requirement (2004 & 2016)
• Three control scenarios (see Figure 6)
The models in this study follow the original DOE CPBM specification for the code compliance
requirement, including:
• Interior and exterior lighting power density specification
• Building envelope
• HVAC equipment type, sizing, and efficiency requirement
• Service water heating equipment
However, there are a few amendments to the original DOE CPBM to accommodate the needs for
this study:
• A detailed zoning plan and the consequent HVAC system configuration modifications
were adopted
• The dynamic occupancy schedules as discussed in the earlier sections were used
• The original detailed ventilation calculation procedure was replaced by the simplified
ventilation calculation procedure
• The occupancy-based egress lighting control specified in Addendum ah to ASHRAE
Standard 90.1-2013 was removed
5 Simulation result analysis
5.1 Time-series analysis
This section presents the time-series analysis for the key control variables, i.e., the temperature
setpoint, the zone primary airflow rate, and the system outdoor airflow rate. This analysis would
help understand and validate the energy savings due to the OCCs. Despite hundreds of building
energy models created by the simulation infrastructure, only the medium office model of ASHRAE
Standard 90.1 – 2016 for Climate Zone 4A (New York City, NY) was selected as an example in
this section due to the page limit. Climate Zone 4A was chosen since its mixed humidity climate
could represent both the heating and cooling scenarios. Besides, it represents a large weighting
factor of office buildings for both new constructions as well as existing ones.
5.1.1 Occupied standby temperature control
The simulation result of the occupied standby temperature setback for a conference room is shown
in Figure 11. This conference room is located on the bottom floor of the medium office. December
19th is selected for the heating mode and July 19th for the cooling mode. The two grey lines
represent the thermostat temperature setpoints for the OCC baseline and advanced cases, and the
blue, red, and green lines represent their respective actual temperatures. The yellow line represents

22
the occupant number of the selected zone on the selected day. Besides, a dashed line was presented
in the figures to show the dry-bulb outdoor temperature.
As suggested by this figure, there are three occupied periods on December 19th and five occupied
periods on July 19th. The heating temperature setpoint of the baseline case remains at 21.0 °C for
the whole day (i.e., 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM) during the heating mode, and remains at 24.0 °C for the
cooling season, no matter when the zone is occupied or not; while the heating/cooling temperature
setpoint of the advanced cases is set back to 2 °C during the unoccupied periods. In this way, the
zone heating/cooling load is reduced, and some of the energy for space cooling and heating could
be saved during the unoccupied period.

Figure 11. The result of the zone-level occupied standby temperature control for a conference
room during the (a) heating and (b) cooling season (New York City, NY – Climate Zone 4A)
5.1.2 Zone minimum primary airflow rate reset
Similarly, the result of the zone minimum primary airflow rate reset for the same zone and the
same period is shown in Figure 12. The yellow line represents the occupant number of the selected
zone on the selected day. The dashed line was presented to show the dry-bulb outdoor temperature.
In ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2016 [29], the VAV terminal box is controlled by the dual maximum
logic which allows the zone primary airflow rate to go up in operation when 𝑉𝑝𝑧_𝑚𝑖𝑛 is unable to
meet the heating load with the maximum supply air temperature in the heating mode [53]. As
suggested in Figure 12 (a), for the OCC baseline case, the zone supply airflow rate is always larger
than or equal to the minimum supply airflow rate obtained from the simplified procedure under
the design occupancy capacity. For Advanced Case I, since the sensor can only detect the presence
status, the VAV box minimum damper position varies between “shutoff” for the unoccupied period
(e.g., at around 20:00) and “design-condition under design occupancy capacity” for the occupied

23
period (e.g., at around 7:40 – 8:40). For Advanced Case II, the control of the minimum supply
airflow rate is flexibly dependent on the actual sensed occupant number (e.g., at around 7:40 –
8:40). For all the three cases, the actual supply airflow rate could exceed the minimum supply
airflow rate in some periods (e.g., at around 7:00) when the minimum supply airflow rate cannot
maintain the heating temperature setpoint, and hence the damper opens more to allow more
conditioned air. For the cooling mode, the damper position will be increased when the minimum
supply airflow rate cannot meet the zone cooling load, just as the dual maximum VAV box control
logic does for the heating mode.

Figure 12. The result of the zone-level occupied standby primary supply airflow rate control for
a conference room during the (a) heating and (b) cooling season (New York City case)
Generally, the supply airflow rate of the baseline cases is larger than that of the two advanced cases
for most of the time, which could save fan energy when the zone is not fully occupied. However,
it should be noted that the primary supply airflow rate of the advanced cases could surpass that of
the baseline case on the occasions when occupants enter an occupied standby zone (e.g., at around
10:00 in Figure 12 (b)). This is because more space heating/cooling is needed for the zone to
recover from the occupied standby temperature reset due to the building thermal inertia.
5.1.3 System outdoor air intake flow reset
The simulation result of the system OA intake is shown in Figure 13. The figure presents the OA
intake flow rates of the air-handling unit (AHU) on the middle floor in 30 working days in the
heating season (i.e., between December and February), and cooling season (i.e., between June and
July) with the different colors denoting the different control scenarios. The bold lines are the
averaged results during the 30 sampling days for the three cases. It’s obvious that benefitting from
the 𝑉𝑜𝑢 reset empowered by the occupancy sensors, the two advanced cases could achieve less
AHU OA intake compared with the baseline case. This reduction is especially obvious at the
24
beginning (i.e., 7:00 – 8:00) and ending (i.e., 18:00 – 21:00) of the day, when many occupants are
not in the offices.
In ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2016, the economizer is activated for the Climate Zone 4A. That
explains why even the AHU OA intake of the baseline case maintains the design 𝑉𝑜𝑡 for most of
the reported time; it could still surpass the design value when the outdoor air temperature is
appropriate for an economizer operation. The same situation is true for the two advanced cases.
Since the economizer operation could vary significantly with the climate condition, the AHU
outdoor air intake was also presented for Fairbanks, AK (Climate Zone 8), and Albuquerque, NM
(Climate Zone 4B), as shown in Figure 14 and Figure 15.
• Compared with the case of New York City, the economizer operation is much more
frequent in Fairbanks during the cooling season, partly due to its cool weather in summer.
Besides, the economizer is rarely operated in the heating season since the outdoor air
temperature is much colder in Alaska.
• Compared with the case of New York City, the economizer operation is much more
frequent in Albuquerque no matter whether it is in the heating mode or the cooling mode.
This is because the economizer operation is determined by the outdoor wet-bulb
temperature in Climate Zone 4B. The local dry climate in New Mexico would help
enable its action.
In general, the average AHU outdoor air intakes of the two advanced cases are smaller than that
of the baseline case, which leads to less required HVAC energy to condition the outdoor air.

Figure 13. The simulation result of the AHU OA intake for the bottom floor during the (a)
heating season and (b) cooling season (New York City case)

25
 Figure 14. The simulation result of the AHU OA intake for the bottom floor during the (a)
heating season and (b) cooling season (Albuquerque case)

Figure 15. The simulation result of the AHU OA intake for the bottom floor during the (a)
heating season and (b) cooling season (Fairbanks case)
5.2 Probability density analysis
Similar to Section 5.1, the medium office of ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2016 was continued to be
selected for the probability density analysis in this Section. The histograms of the AHU (i.e., the

26
AHU on the middle floor) outdoor air intake, office room (i.e., an open office on the bottom floor)
VAV box primary airflow rate, and conference room (i.e., a conference room on the middle floor)
VAV box primary airflow rate for New York City, Fairbanks, and Albuquerque are presented in
Figure 16. The probability distribution data were obtained by post-processing the annual
simulation results.
As demonstrated in the figure, the occupancy sensors could increase the fraction of the time that
the zones and systems are in the status of “zero zone supply air/AHU OA intake”, or “reduced
zone supply air/AHU OA intake” for the two advanced cases. Operations with lower air flowrates
could save energy from the reduction in fan energy consumption and air-conditioning energy
consumption.
Moreover, compared with the presence sensor, which treats the zone as “fully-occupied” as long
as it is occupied, the occupant counting sensor adjusts the damper position (via the 𝑉𝑝𝑧_𝑚𝑖𝑛 and
minimum 𝑉𝑜𝑡 reset) based on the real occupant number in the room. Thus, Advanced Case II could
achieve a lower zone supply airflow rate and system OA flow rate. This typically results in less
energy usage for conditioning the outdoor air when the system is not in an economizer mode.
Therefore, this feature of the occupant counting sensor can bring more energy savings.
Furthermore, the conclusion in Section 5.1.3 is once again confirmed in Figure 16 that the air-side
economizer is more frequently operated in Fairbanks and Albuquerque than in New York City.

Figure 16. The histograms of the AHU outdoor air intake, office room primary supply airflow
rate, and conference room VAV box supply airflow rate for New York City, Fairbanks, and
Albuquerque.

27
5.3 Energy consumption analysis
The HVAC energy simulation results of the medium office and large office building energy models
per ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2004 and – 2016 are presented in Figure 17, Figure 18, Figure 19,
and Figure 20, respectively. The three bars in each climate zone correspond to the OCC baseline
case, Advanced Case I, and Advanced Case II from left to right. Color red, blue, and gray of the
bars represent the energy usage intensity (EUI) of heating, cooling, and HVAC auxiliaries (e.g.,
fan energy consumption, pump energy consumption, heat recovery energy consumption, etc.). The
yellow and orange texts on top of the bars show the HVAC energy-saving ratios of Advanced Case
I and Advanced Case II against the OCC baseline case, respectively. Besides, to better evaluate
the effect of the code update on energy savings, a heat map was created to demonstrate the HVAC
energy-saving ratio for Advanced Case II vs. OCC baseline case in Figure 21.

Figure 17. HVAC energy simulation results of the medium office building per ASHRAE Standard
90.1 – 2004

Figure 18. HVAC energy simulation results of the medium office building per ASHRAE Standard
90.1 – 2016

28
 Figure 19. HVAC energy simulation results of the large office building per ASHRAE Standard
90.1 – 2004

Figure 20. HVAC energy simulation results of the large office building per ASHRAE Standard
90.1 – 2016
Firstly, it’s apparent that the total HVAC EUI of both office building models was decreased after
the version update of ASHRAE Standard 90.1 due to better building envelopes, higher equipment
efficiencies, and more advanced building controls [31, 37]. This change in the code requirement
could influence the OCC HVAC energy savings as well. For instance, the HVAC energy-saving
ratio was decreased after the energy recovery ventilation (ERV) was activated for Climate Zone 7
and 8 in large office buildings, since the energy savings due to outdoor air intake reset for advanced
cases were reduced. Generally, the OCC energy-saving ratios were decreased for most simulation
scenarios in this case, as illustrated in Figure 21.
A larger HVAC energy-saving ratio could be achieved in the medium office compared with the
large office. There are two reasons for this difference. Firstly, the data center and IT closets in the
large office consume a lot of HVAC energy. The occupancy sensors cannot bring many benefits
to this portion of energy consumptions. For instance, approximately 5,445 GJ of the total HVAC
energy was used by the data center and IT closets in New York City, NY (OCC baseline case per

29
ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2016). This takes up nearly over 45% of the total HVAC energy
consumption. The HVAC energy-saving ratio of Advanced II vs. OCC baseline case would be
increased from 12% to 24% after stripping off the data center and IT closets, which is nearly a
one-fold growth. Secondly, the heating and cooling sources in the large office model are water-
cooled centrifugal chillers and gas-fired boiler. In contrast, those in the medium office are direct
expansion (DX) cooling coils and packaged gas furnaces. Hence, compared with the medium
office, the large office model is less likely to benefit from the OCCs due to the nonlinear
characteristics of the chillers, boilers, and pumps. This is also validated by the large HVAC
auxiliary energy proportions in Figure 19 and Figure 20.

Figure 21. Heat map of the HVAC energy-saving ratio of the different simulation scenarios
(Advanced Case II vs. OCC baseline case)
A higher HVAC energy-saving ratio could be achieved in the heating-dominated climate zone
(e.g., Fairbanks, AK, Climate Zone 8) comparing to the cooling-dominated climate zone (e.g.,
Honolulu, HI, Climate Zone 1A). This is probably due to the different impacts of outdoor air
temperatures on the building heating/cooling load from the outdoor air intake. For example, the
sensible ventilation load can be calculated as the product of three factors, i.e., the specific heat of
the air, the amount of outdoor air intake, and the temperature difference between the indoor and
outdoor environments. Considering that the indoor-outdoor air temperature difference is typically
larger in the winter than in the summer, more HVAC energy could be saved in the heating season
for most scenarios. Consequently, the climate zone with a colder winter could see more HVAC
energy savings due to the implementation of OCCs.
Besides, it is noted that compared with the occupancy presence sensor, the occupant counting
sensor only brings a marginal benefit to the HVAC energy-saving ratio. This confirms the
observations from Section 5.1.3 that the average outdoor air intake flow rate of Advanced Case I
is very close to that of Advanced II in Climate Zone 4A, 4B, and 8.
It is also observed that the large office advanced cases achieve relatively small HVAC energy-
saving ratios in climate zone 3C of which the representative city is San Diego, CA. This is because
the heating load is very small in the large office in Climate Zone 3C due to the mild local climate
in winter. Hence, even if a lot of energy savings are achieved in the heating season, the relatively
small energy-saving ratio in the cooling season still decreases the total HVAC energy-saving
performance.

30
6 Conclusions and future work
This paper presents a nationwide simulation to investigate the energy-saving potential of the
occupant-centric HVAC controls for the office buildings. The medium office and large office from
the original Department of Energy Commercial Prototype Building Models were selected and
modified by adding a detailed zoning plan and dynamic occupant schedules to serve the simulation
purpose. A comprehensive simulation plan which incorporates the multiple advanced occupant-
centric control strategies for the multi-zone VAV system was developed based on the update
building energy codes, e.g., ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2019 [26] and ASHRAE Guideline 36 –
2018 [27]. Python scripts, which could automatically generate the EnergyPlus EMS programs to
implement the proposed OCC strategies, were created and merged with the Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory’s simulation infrastructure. This hybrid simulation infrastructure could
generate baseline and advanced building energy models for different climate zones and code
versions in batch per the code requirements.
6.1 Conclusions
Based on the nationwide simulation results, the following conclusions could be drawn:
• Generally, both the occupancy presence sensor and occupant counting sensor could achieve
energy savings for the office buildings, with the occupancy presence sensor leading to an
energy saving ratio of between 19% to 44% and the occupant counting sensor leading to
an energy saving ratio of between 20% to 45% for the medium office per ASHRAE
Standard 90.1 - 2004. This energy-saving effect is mainly due to three aspects: the reduced
building load because of the occupied-standby zone temperature setback, the zone
minimum supply airflow rate reset when the zone is partly occupied or unoccupied, and
the reduced system minimum outdoor airflow rate reset as a consequence of the system
uncorrected outdoor airflow rate reset. However, compared with the occupancy presence
sensor, which could support both the temperature setpoint reset and operational 𝑉𝑏𝑧 reset
for the unoccupied zones, the occupant counting sensor only brings a marginal benefit.
• The update of building codes (i.e., the update from ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2004 to
ASHRAE Standard 90.1 - 2016) does not only influence the total EUI of the building
HVAC system, but also poses effects to the building HVAC energy-saving ratios due to
occupant centric controls. Generally, the newer office buildings will have smaller HVAC
energy-saving ratios due to occupant centric controls. For instance, the medium office in
Climate Zone 3C (of which the representative city is San Francisco, CA) could save 45%
of HVAC energy after the occupant-centric control was implemented with ASHRAE
Standard 90.1 – 2004; however, this energy-saving ratio would drop to 36% after the
building energy code was updated to ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2016.
• A higher HVAC energy-saving ratio could be achieved in the heating-dominated zone,
since the energy reduction brought with the minimum outdoor airflow rate reset is stronger
in the heating mode due to a larger indoor-outdoor temperature difference. For instance,

31
 only 2% of HVAC energy saving could be achieved by the occupant counting sensor in
Climate Zone 1A (of which the representative city is Honolulu, Hawaii) for the large office
per ASHRAE Standard 90.1 – 2016; nevertheless, this ratio would be increased to 19% for
Climate Zone 8 (of which the representative city is Fairbanks, AK). It’s also noted that
more energy savings could be achieved in the marine climates (i.e., Climate Zone 3C, 4C,
and 5C) for the medium office compared with their counterparts (e.g., Climate Zone 3A,
4A, and 5A). For example, 46% and 48% of HVAC energy savings were achieved for
Climate Zone 4C (Seattle, WA) and 5C (Port Angeles, WA) per ASHRAE Standard 90.1
– 2004, while only 33% and 30% of energy savings were expected in Climate Zone 4A
(New York City, NY) and Climate Zone 5A (Buffalo, NY).
• The large office has a smaller energy-saving ratio. For some extreme cases, the medium
office could achieve an energy saving ratio of 45%, while the large office could only save
3% in the same condition in terms of energy codes and climate zones. Two reasons possibly
contribute to this: firstly, the data center and IT closets in the large office consume a large
amount of HVAC energy while do not benefit from the occupant centric control
implementation; secondly, its HVAC system (i.e., gas-fueled boiler for space heating and
electric chiller) is less likely to benefit from the occupant centric controls due to the
operating characteristics of the HVAC equipment, compared with the medium office
whose cooling and heating sources are direct expansion cooling coils and packaged gas
furnaces.
6.2 Future work
The following work is proposed for the near future to further explore the energy-saving potential
of the occupant centric controls for building HVAC system:
• An econometric analysis will be conducted to investigate the economic feasibility of
implementing the occupant-centric HVAC controls in the existing buildings.
• A sensor error analysis will be performed to evaluate how the different types of occupancy
sensor errors and airflow sensor errors will influence the building energy consumption and
occupant thermal comfort.
• More building types, e.g., the school buildings, the hotel buildings, the residential
buildings, etc., will be added.
The field testing is being scheduled to validate the energy savings potential obtained by the
simulation studies in both controlled lab environment and real buildings in two different climate
zones.
Acknowledgments
The research reported in this paper was supported by the U.S. Advanced Research Projects
Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) under the award number DE-AR0000936. We appreciate Dr. Yulong
Xie, Mr. Jeremy Lerond (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), and Mr. Joe Arnstein (Taylor

32
Engineering) for providing technical support on the simulation plan and infrastructure
development.

Nomenclatures
𝑅𝑝 Outdoor airflow rate required per person
𝑅𝑎 Outdoor airflow rate required per unit area
𝑃𝑧 Zone population
𝐴𝑧 Zone area
𝑉𝑏𝑧 Breathing zone outdoor airflow
𝐸𝑧 Zone air distribution effectiveness
𝑉𝑜𝑧 Zone outdoor airflow
𝑉𝑝𝑧 Zone primary airflow
𝑍𝑝𝑧 Primary outdoor air fraction
𝑉𝑜𝑢 Uncorrected outdoor air intake
𝐷 Occupant diversity ratio
𝐸𝑣 System ventilation efficiency
𝑉𝑜𝑡 Outdoor air intake flow

Abbreviations
AHU Air-Handling Unit
American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-
ASHRAE Conditioning Engineers
BAS Building Automation System
CPBM Commercial Prototype Building Model
DCV Demand-Controlled Ventilation
DOE Department of Energy
EMV Energy Management System
EPD Equipment Power Density
ERV Energy Recovery Unit
HVAC Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning
IECC International Energy Conservation Code

33
 LBNL Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
LPD Lighting Power Density
MPC Model Predictive Control
OCC Occupant-Centric Control
ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory
PI Progress Indicator
PNNL Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
QA Quality Assurance
QC Quality Control
VAV Variable Air Volume
VRP Ventilation Rate Procedure

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