Individual Thermal Comfort and Energy Optimization

This paper describes a methodology for improving individual thermal comfort in an officebuilding without increasing energy consumption. Our approach is based on the observationthat an individuals preferred temperature is not a precise value, but a range around apreferred value. We take advantage of this to optimize the temperature settings of eachoccupants personal space to minimize the overall energy use. We have employed a nonlinearprogramming approach to improve individual thermal comfort without increasing energyconsumption, even possibly saving energy. This optimization approach has been applied withvery encouraging results for many office population distributions in 15 USA cities, and over awide range of interior wall thermal resistances. This approach has also been generalized andsimplified to allow optimization with a reduced set of inputs.