Personalized environmental control systems (PECS): Overview of evaluation methods

Nowadays, the building sector faces many challenges on occupant and resource levels. Given many indoor environmental quality (IEQ) complaints collected by field surveys, the first challenge is to provide comfort improvements. The second challenge is to be able to do so without unjustifiably increasing energy costs. The main reason why buildings face such issues is the implementation of IEQ management systems that target the entire space – even unoccupied zones. This doesn’t guarantee comfort and wastes building resources. This led to the development of personalized environmental control systems (PECS) that aim to improve IEQ where it is needed – in the vicinity of occupants responding to individual needs while giving them the possibility of control. This not only improves comfort but can lead to energy savings with proper system design and operation. PECS have been extensively studied in the literature via diverse simulation or experimental methods with researchers reporting the performance using different indices and metrics. However, currently; there exists no standardized or universal ways of studying and reporting the performance of PECS. Thus, the aim of Subtask D of IEA EBC’s Annex 87 on PECS is to develop such guidelines by first giving an overview of the existing methodological trends on PECS performance assessment. This summary gives an overview of the ongoing literature review with focus on thermal & IAQ PECS and presents some preliminary results.