New Profiles of Occupancy Driven Appliance, Lighting, Plug Loads and Hot Water Use for Residential Sector Energy Demand Modeling

Abstract

Energy modeling is used by researchers to estimate aggregate energy consumption and time-step load (power) of buildings. However, researchers often rely on a limited number of occupant load profiles that are repeated for multiple houses to represent communities, resulting in unrealistic load peaks and valleys that do not permit comprehensive demand evaluation. In this thesis, new methods have been developed to generate annual domestic hot water (DHW) and electricity load profiles from measured datasets to address these aggregation issues. Two measured electricity and two measured DHW datasets were obtained through electrical utility metering programs, academic and industrial research endeavors, and municipal energy savings programs. From these datasets, 82 new annual 1-minute DHW profiles and 62 new annual 15-minute ALP profiles have been generated. To demonstrate the effect of using a variation of profiles, individual household and community scale building simulations were conducted and both technical and economic applications were demonstrated.