Impacts Of Human Behavior On Energy Consumption Of Residential Buildings In China’s Hot Summer And Cold Winter Zone

Energy is an important basic material for human survival, which is closely related to the development of human society. As the increasing energy consumption and the price of oil, the sustainability of the energy supplying has become more serious. The energy consumption in the process of building construction and building in using accounts for half of the global energy consumption. Building energy efficiency has attracted much more attention from all over the world. As China consuming much number of energy for the building construction, building energy efficiency plays an important role in solving the energy crisis, improving indoor environmental quality and ensuring the strategies sustainable energy supplying. Now, the building energy consumption in the Yangtze River Zone grows fast, and the major climate characteristic in this zone is hot in summer and cold in winter, so cooling and heating are all necessary both in summer and winter. The special climate feature makes the building energy efficiency in this zone be a world challenge.In this dissertation, the energy consumption for the residential building in hot summer and cold winter zone was analyzed through questionnaire survey for 2 years. More than 900 valid feedbacks received from 8 provinces and municipalities in this zone. The relationship between human behavior, indoor thermal environment and energy consumption was analyzed based on the field survey. The results show that the different behaviors of controlling air conditioning (AC) will greatly affect the energy consumption in residential building both in heating or cooling seasons. The human behaviors include the habits of using AC, different AC setting temperature and switching mode. Based on the survey results, using the statistics software SPSS to make a multiple-factor-analysis for the factors influencing building energy consumption. The results show the significance level of the factors ranks as: the time of using AC, AC setting temperature, the behavior pattern of switching on/off, family member, night ventilation and the area of the building. It indicted that the human behaviors are the important factors for the energy consumption for the residential building in the hot summer and cold winter zone.The energy simulation software EnergyPlus was used to simulate the AC energy consumption under the condition of different life styles. The conditions include AC setting temperature, AC using time, behavior pattern of switching on/off, and exterior window open/close. The simulation results show that, under the condition of ensuring the indoor thermal comfort, increasing the AC setting temperature can get the ideal the energy conservation effect. And from the point of AC energy consumption, it is not to recommended to set the lower temperature when start to use AC and then set higher temperature after a few minutes. Some people in summer will switch off AC when they use for a few hours and then switch on AC when they feel hot. This behavior pattern is better than those that let AC work for the whole day and is recommended by the author.Two residential buildings were chosen to analyze the building energy in the case study. The results show on the same conditions of building orientation, enclosure structure and family member, the energy consumption in the transition seasons is approximately same, but in summer, for the different behavior, the energy consumption is different. The case study indicates the human behaviors will greatly affect the building energy consumption.In the last part of the dissertation, the math model of building energy consumption based on human behaviors was set up and the factor , behavior energy efficiency, was induced in the model, which indicates the influence of human behavior to building energy consumption. The value of and its application was explained in the dissertation.Three research methods, field survey, energy simulation and case study, were used to analyze the residential energy consumption from the points of quality and quantity. The fruits in the dissertation will promote the building energy efficiency in China.