LSU Construction Management Professor Developing Occupant-Centric Energy Management System
December 20, 2024
BATON ROUGE, LA – Thermostat wars are not just limited to the home; they are also common in office environments and can result in negative outcomes like adversely affecting worker productivity and driving up energy costs unnecessarily.
To combat these issues, LSU Construction Management Associate Professor Amirhosein Jafari is leading a project funded by a $159,000 Board of Regents grant to develop an occupant-centric energy management system (OCEMS) aimed at benefitting both employees and business owners.
“By 2025, buildings are projected to account for 75% of total U.S. electricity consumption, with more than 80% of their life-cycle energy use occurring during operation,” Jafari said. “Even a small improvement in the energy efficiency of building operations would result in substantial economic and environmental benefits.”
The project’s goal is to develop and test an OCEMS that is able to capture the building occupants’ behavioral dynamics and integrate them into building systems controls.
“OCEMS uses low-cost sensing devices to capture the occupant behavior dynamics and then connects building and human systems through an adaptive control loop to enable sustained energy savings while maintaining comfort level,” Jafari said.
Jafari and his team, including LSU CM Assistant Professor Arup Bhattacharya and LSU CM Professor Yimin Zhu, are using a small-scale office at LSU to serve as a testbed for prototyping and data collection. The team built a desktop gadget powered by the Internet of Things (IoT) that connects to a cloud-based server and integrates a desk fan to demonstrate OCEMS functionality. This setup is currently being used to evaluate the system’s feasibility and potential.
“We conducted experiments where students sit at a desk with the integrated system, and we controlled the airflow and temperature while gathering their thermal comfort feedback,” Jafari said. “The results were interesting. For example, as we expected, when the temperature is set to 72 degrees and the desk fan is off, they felt comfortable. However, increasing the temperature to 78 degrees and introducing additional airflow of 0.15 meters per second (m/s) using the desk fan made most participants feel even more comfortable. This demonstrated that OCEMS can save energy by increasing the thermostat setpoint during warmer seasons while improving individual thermal comfort through personalized airflow control, something traditional HVAC systems can’t achieve.”
While many offices already use occupancy sensors for lighting, most air conditioning systems do not currently account for occupant preferences. Jafari and his team have developed chair sensors and occupancy sensors to be integrated into OCEMS, enabling the system to detect when an office chair is occupied and adjust temperature and airflow based on the occupant’s personalized settings.
“What we are developing is just a small-scale individual gadget, but the broader vision is to integrate these into bigger systems,” Jafari said. “The idea of human-centric energy management is to move away from treating everyone the same. Instead, we can tailor the environment to individual preferences, reducing energy waste while enhancing comfort.”
Like us on Facebook or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Bluesky, and X.
###
Contact: Libby Haydel
Communications Manager
225-578-4840
ehaydel1@lsu.edu
Latest College of Engineering News
- LSU ChE, SJA Students Study Breast Cancer in 3D EnvironmentOctober 24, 2022BATON ROUGE, LA - Though October is recognized nationally as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, LSU faculty and students are working every month to help combat the potentially fatal disease that has been projected to affect nearly 340,000 Americans this year.
- Testing Backdate
- LSU Researchers Create Low-Cost Method to Recycle PlasticBATON ROUGE – LSU researchers have created a new, low-cost way to break down plastic, a potential breakthrough that could save billions of dollars and eliminate billions of tons of plastic pollution.
- CEE's Mohammad Appointed to Editorship of ASCE PublicationBATON ROUGE, LA - LSU Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Louay Mohammad has been selected to serve as co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering (JMCE), a publication of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
- LSU Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Develops Software to Protect Offshore WindfarmsIn July 2023, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that it would hold the first-ever offshore wind energy lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, renewable energy companies have expressed interest in wind farming, with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management finalizing four Wind Energy Areas that could produce enough clean, renewable energy to power more than 3 million homes. However, with this rapid growth comes challenges, such as protecting these wind farms from hurricanes.
- Wei Named Chair of Division of Electrical and Computer EngineeringDecember 11BATON ROUGE, LA - The College of Engineering has named Shuangqing Wei as the new chair of the Division of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Wei currently holds the Michel B. Voorhies Distinguished Professorship in the division.