Investigation And Analysis Of The Relationship Between Residential Energy Use Behavior And Energy Consumption In China

Residential building energy consumption and human behavior are closely related.China’s current residential energy consumption level is far below that of the UnitedStates and other developed countries, which is highly related to the traditional lifestylethat is frugal in China. With the development of China’s economic level, the residentsrequire more comfortable living environment. In order not to follow the path of theUnited States and other developed countries which is high energy consumption, to studyhuman behavior and the state of mind in residential buildings is very significant.Besides, central air conditioning system which can create constant temperature andhumidity environment has emerged. Whether this kind of air conditioning system issuitable for China is an urgent problem to answer. To solve these problems, this papercarried out the following study:First of all, the literature review revealed that field study of residentsair-conditioning and heating energy consumption and behavior is rare, then thesignificance of this study is pointed out.Secondly, summer survey of residents’ air conditioning energy consumption andhuman behavior is carried out in Suzhou which is economically developed. Theinvestigated households all use non-central air conditioning system.Third, on the basis of summer investigation in Suzhou, the investigation of heatingenergy consumption and human behavior of residents use non-central air conditioningsystem was conducted in Suzhou and Shanghai. The phenomenon that heating eneryconsumption is distributed from low to high is proposed and the corelationship researchbetween heating energy consumption and heating behavior is conducted.Fourth, the air conditioning and heating energy consumption in Suzhou iscomprehensive analysed, thus total energy consumption for air conditioning and heatingin hot summer and cold winter is obtained. Then a detailed analysis of the annualenergy consumption of a household which consumed relative more energy in Shanghai,Suzhou and Beijing is carried out, respectively. The results is compared with that of theresidets in the Kanto region of Japan in2003, confirming China’s residential buildingenergy consumption level is still low. Fifth, the analysis of the difference of the households in the use of air conditioning,windows and other behavior and the state of mind our residents of non-central airconditioning system and central air conditioning system is carried out, and the energyconsumption of air conditioning system of the two categories were compared. Theconcept of central air conditioning which is to create "constant temperature andhumidity” environment has changed the living habits of the household is found. Centralair-conditioning energy consumption level is three to four times higher than householdsof non-central air conditioning system.Sixth, energy simulation software DeST is used to simuluate the energyconsumption in a household in Suzhou and the energy consumption data is comparedwith the energy index listed in Design Standard for Energy Efficiency of ResidentialBuildings in Hot Summer and Cold Winter Zone. The results show that the energyconsumption index for air conditioning and heating is larger than the actual test resultssince the air conditioning mode set in the calculation is “whole time and whole space”in design standard.