Monitoring occupancy practices and comfort in commercial buildings

Improving energy efficiency in commercial buildings is of great importance, given the large percentage of energy consumed in the sector. Energy consumption in commercial buildings account for 30-40% of the primary energy consumption in developed countries. The implementation of low carbon technologies in buildings can potentially decrease energy consumption, however many small and medium companies lease buildings and therefore investments in building technology are not a viable option. In addition, energy consumption is only a very small part of the financial burden of companies, and thus, economic incentives have a low impact in these environments. Furthermore, occupancy behaviour is greatly affected by the type of building and installations. Very environmentally friendly occupancy patterns in an energy inefficient building will not show up in the energy bill, and so, the efforts of the occupants would not be visible or rewarded. On the other hand, very wasteful occupancy patterns in a very energy efficient building might hinder the buildings' performance, but might not be discovered looking only at energy figures. The Building Occupancy Certification System (BOCS) aims at developing an evaluation system focused on the building's occupancy instead of its technical characteristics. The objective of BOCS is the reduction of energy consumption in offices while improving indoor conditions. In this regard, the improvement of indoor conditions and thus, productivity is the incentive for company managers and staff to implement the BOCS system. This paper reports on the system infrastructure and evaluation of the BOCS methodology.