Intelligent Buildings International

ISSN: 1750-8975 (Print) 1756-6932 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tibi20

The use of intelligent systems for monitoring

energy use and occupancy in existing homes

Catalina Spataru & Mark Gillott

To cite this article: Catalina Spataru & Mark Gillott (2011) The use of intelligent systems for
monitoring energy use and occupancy in existing homes, Intelligent Buildings International, 3:1,
24-31

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3763/inbi.2010.0006

Published online: 08 Jun 2011.

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

The use of intelligent systems for

monitoring energy use and occupancy
in existing homes
Catalina Spataru*, Mark Gillott
Institute of Sustainable Energy Technology, Department of Architecture and Built Environment,
Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

In the UK, carbon dioxide emissions from existing domestic building stock account for a significant
percentage. The UK Government has set ambitious targets for reducing UK carbon dioxide emissions by
80% by 2050. These targets will require significant changes to the existing buildings. To understand
and quantify the benefits of refurbishment solutions, it is vital to monitor exemplar buildings and bring
them to an energy efficiency standard with lower associated carbon emissions, by finding the most
efficient way to refurbish them. The case study considered is a 1930s replica three-bed semi-detached
house located in the University of Nottingham campus. The house is fully monitored, including
monitoring of the occupants patterns, environmental monitoring, electricity use and energy associated
with space and hot-water heating. The results presented in this article show that energy consumption
profiles are related to the occupants. The study shows that it is not enough just to improve building
performance in order to improve energy efficiency; it is also important to understand and influence
occupant behaviour because in domestic buildings occupants exert complete control of the appliances,
lights, heating and ventilation. General behavioural trends and patterns can be extracted from long-term
collected data.

Keywords: building performance; energy-efficient dwellings; occupant behaviour; post-occupancy

evaluation

INTRODUCTION reducing UK carbon dioxide emissions by 80%

The threat of climate change due to the increase
in greenhouse gas emissions has led to
worldwide concern. According to the Fourth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), the primary
causes of climate change are due to human
activities. In the UK, the existing domestic
building stock accounts for 30% of the total
carbon dioxide emissions (BRE, 2008). The UK
Government has set ambitious targets for
by 2050. Many studies state that energy use
depends on occupant behaviour, but very little
research shows clearly how consumption and
occupant behaviour are related to each other.
There is an urgent need to implement methods
in order to determine occupants interaction
behaviour with available domestic technology,
such as heating systems, electrical equipment
and lights, and to come up with solutions in
order to reduce energy use in existing homes.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: Catalina.Spataru@nottingham.ac.uk

Intelligent Buildings International 3 (2011), 2431, doi:10.3763/inbi.2010.0006

2011 Earthscan ISSN: 1750-8975 (print), 1756-6932 (online) www.earthscan.co.uk/journals/inbi
 Intelligent systems for monitoring energy use and occupancy 25
The objective of this study is to investigate
and develop a novel post-occupancy evaluation
(POE) methodology and software that integrates
energy use, environment data and occupancy in
one package. The necessity of such software is
to analyse and reduce excessive energy
consumption and high energy cost due to
occupants energy use behaviour. Besides the
implementation of various technologies in
improving buildings, there is also a need to
determine occupants behaviour and energy
consumption, depending on the number of
occupants. These data will enable us to
determine the carbon footprints of individuals
within the house by linking their whereabouts to
the household energy consumed, during
different stages of the house being refurbished.
SYSTEMS FOR PEOPLE TRACKING AND
ACTIVITY RECOGNITION
Tracking people, their activity and location, as
well as objects within buildings is a process
applied by many researchers in various fields,
such as pervasive computing, multimedia
processing and computer vision. Many studies
suggest that by using occupancy sensors, good
measured data performance and savings of
25 75% in a variety of spaces can be obtained
(Cordes, 1990). A variety of methods for existing
tracking technology in the ubiquitous computing
area have been developed, including
wristbands, radio frequencies (RF), Wi-Fi
technology, GSM (Global Systems for Mobile
Communication) technology and GPS (Global
Positioning System).
The system-based power line network
(Brumitt et al., 2000) uses switches and motion
sensors (detectors) to track indoor human
activities. The system provides reliable data that
are easy to process. However, it cannot provide
detailed information, because a motion sensor
can only say whether a person is present or not
in the monitored area. It cannot provide any
data about the exact location of the person.
Koile et al. (2003) proposed a computer vision
system to monitor the persons location and the
moving trajectory.
Aggarwal and Cai (1999) have reviewed 2D
and 3D methods for human motion tracking and
human activity recognition.
Many systems using sensing technologies
such as radio frequency identification (RFID) are
available on the market, and are very efficient
and reliable in collecting data. An RFID system
is an automatic system that uses radio waves to
capture information from tags. It is used in
various fields (health, pharma, manufacturing,
defence, energy and aviation) for real-time
localization/positioning and identification of
objects and components, providing accurate
location information. One of the first users of
RFID for researching occupancy patterns in
domestic buildings was Gillott et al.
(2006). Over time, researchers have tried
to improve the accuracy and precision,
improving the sensing hardware by minimizing
the size.
THE CASE STUDY CONSIDERED THE
E.ON 2016 RESEARCH HOUSE
A semi-detached house (Figure 1) was built in
the University of Nottingham campus to the
building standards of the 1930s, being
representative of several homes that still exist in
the UK. This project provides scientific data to
verify current retrofit technologies to upgrade
existing homes, by developing innovative
solutions for improving energy performance,
and assesses cost-effective measures for
reducing carbon emissions from aged buildings
and potentially applied to similar properties
across the UK.
The house was occupied by a family (mother,
father and daughter). Comprehensive equipment
was used for measuring electricity, water and gas
consumption, environmental measuring and
occupants patterns, to assess the performance
of a typical 1930s house and the upgrades to
different levels of sustainability (Gillott and
Spataru, 2010). A range of sensors, such as
temperature, black bulb temperature, air quality
and humidity sensors, were placed across the
house at different locations: walls, floors and
ceilings.
Intelligent Buildings International 3 (2011)
26 Spataru, Gillott
FIGURE 1 The E.ON 2016 Research House on the university site campus
The loft space was a research laboratory with
access provided through the service zone to the
party wall side of the house (where data were
collected), simulating the environmental
performance of an adjacent property, keeping
the party wall warm.
All measurements from the building system
management were recorded in the central
control panel and were accessed through 963
Supervisor software v.2 (provided by Horizons
Control) on a PC located in the loft space. The
data logging equipment was a graphical
real-time user interface for the building control
system, providing acceptable accuracy but a
limited storage capacity, being able to host on a
page a maximum of 100 sensors (Trend 963,
2008). The quantitative data were logged
continuously and periodically collected in .*txt
files and used as a benchmark for the energy
performances for UK houses. The data can also
be seen on the internet through a wireless
ZigBee, an area network technology based on
the IEEE 802.15.4-2006 standard, with a
transmission range of 100 m, which
consumes very little power (www.zigbee.com,
accessed December 2009).
Intelligent Buildings International 3 (2011)
REAL-TIME OCCUPANCY MONITORING
SYSTEM USED
The technology used in this work includes an
ultra-wideband RF location system (supplied by
UBISENSE) to track and monitor occupants and
space use (Ubisense Manual, 2007). It is the
first time that this version has been used for an
application in a domestic property. With a high
positional accuracy and reliability, the system
was used to track patterns of space usage in
the house for real time and location, by
determining their real-time occupancy patterns.
A number of sensors were placed strategically
around the house and pointed towards the floor
so as to detect a robust localization of the tag
worn by the person with a relatively high
accuracy (Figure 2).
Each sensor network cable was connected to
an ethernet switch. For the occupants, the
devices used were active ultra-high-frequency
RFID tags.
The following steps were performed. First,
mounting brackets for sensors and cabling were
installed, sensors were mounted, network data
cables and timing cables were connected to the
sensors, power supplies were connected, and
 Intelligent systems for monitoring energy use and occupancy 27
FIGURE 2 Schematic map of sensors location in the E.ON 2016 Research House
occupancy sensors in the test house were
calibrated and tested. Then upload the plan of
the house was uploaded and the sensors on it
were located. The tag details were introduced in
the system and the settings done.
Next, zones and sub-zones were defined and
the necessary monitoring settings were done by
creating roles and associating shapes with
them, so that a detailed map of occupants
actions could be determined. Figure 3 shows
the sub-zones created in the living room zone.
For each zone in the house, sub-zones were
created, so as to create a detailed map of the
occupants pattern.
Using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, a C#
application in the host computer was created to
place all the tags in a list view, obtain the
location data for any particular tag (person
location and person description) and monitor
the spatial relationship. The GUI (graphical user
FIGURE 3 Sub-zones defined in the living room zone
interface) aspect of the form was designed
using labels and buttons.
A monitor schema was created in order to
query current relationships between objects.
Another schema was created to query the names
of the tags (persons) and their relationships
within the selected spaces in the home.
When a person or an object with an assigned
tag moves in close proximity of the sensors, the
ID of the tag is detected by the sensors and the
tag reader sends the data to the system, where
it is translated and combined with a set of
pre-stored data parameters. There, based on
the users request, the system detects
information about the tag ID and person
identity. Information on the location and actions
of the occupants are logged by the reader
program to a *csv file (a comma separated file).
A POE TOOL DATA PROCESSING AND
EVALUATION
A key aspect in our study is the data process. The
*csv files with the occupants data obtained with
the UBISENSE system and the *txt files with the
quantitative indoor measurements are
transported and sorted in a database in
Microsoft Access 2007. Computer interface
software was developed, capable of retrieving
information about environmental parameters,
energy consumption and occupancy (IN/OUT
status from a particular space and (X, Y)
location). A series of event procedures were
written to perform an action or a series of
actions relating energy consumption and
Intelligent Buildings International 3 (2011)
28 Spataru, Gillott
occupants presence. A schematic diagram of the
entire POE process that integrates energy use,
environment data and occupancy is shown in
Figure 4.
The computer interface software developed
will enable researchers to analyse the data
efficiently and in a short period of time, and
large data sets can easily be accessed. The
input data were categorized in parameters
(sensors), persons (occupants) and cells (zones
considered in the house). The tool can provide
breakdown domestic energy consumption and
environmental, occupancy profiles and the
relations between them for any specific period.
This is an essential part of the POE study,
because it provides accurate data that will
enable us to determine the carbon footprints of
individuals within the house by linking their
whereabouts to the household energy
consumed, during different stages of the house
being refurbished. Detailed occupancy data are
FIGURE 4 A schematic diagram of the POE process
Intelligent Buildings International 3 (2011)
often the one unknown variable even in the
most comprehensive POE studies.
In order to provide detailed information, it is
necessary to take into account the following
factors: number of occupants and daily presence
time, whether they are active or asleep, duration
of lighting in each room, real indoor temperature
and type and use of appliances. The identification
of zones within the house is important to know
where each person is located. From the
information collected, it can be determined
where energy is consumed in excess.
The patterns of time spent in particular
spaces depend on the number of persons
present in the house. Figure 5 shows an
example of a graph with the number of active
occupants over 24 h. These patterns could vary
over the course of each day.
To see how much these patterns vary,
occupants were monitored in each season
during the year. It is vital to know the
 Intelligent systems for monitoring energy use and occupancy 29
FIGURE 5 Number of active occupants during 24 h
occupancy pattern in order to determine how
space is used during different seasons, whether
any energy is wasted and how it can be
reduced. Detailed monitoring of behaviour was
undertaken by using the UBISENSE system.
Figure 6 shows the patterns of space usage of
an occupant (father) during 24 h.
The amount of gas usage is related to the
outside temperature and occupants presence in
the dwelling (Figure 7). Once the outside
temperature is low, gas consumption increases so
that the temperature inside stays almost constant
during the 24 h. It was observed that outside
environmental conditions affect behavioural
actions, which in turn affect gas consumption in
the house. When a person is present, the space
temperature increases due to the use of a gas
heating system. Therefore, as expected, colder
temperatures lead to higher energy use.
FIGURE 6 Patterns of space usage of an occupant during 24 h
Relations between electricity consumption
and occupants patterns were determined
from the monitoring systems by using the
interface tool (Figure 8). This supports
previous studies, which indicate that electricity
demand is affected by occupants behaviour
(Seligman et al., 1977; Moore, 1993; Toftum
et al., 2009).
The computer interface software is capable
of generating a series of graphs for any interval
of time: weeks, months or years. In addition,
the interface tool can generate a series of
different graphs for various combinations of
selected parameters: pie charts showing the
percentage of electricity and gas consumption
and occupancy per zone, bar charts by
comparing the time spent for certain periods of
time (work days and rest days), bar charts
showing the consumption for different periods
Intelligent Buildings International 3 (2011)
30 Spataru, Gillott

FIGURE 7 Environmental conditions versus energy consumption schedule during 24 h

FIGURE 8 Occupants pattern versus electricity schedule in the dining room zone

of time during a day and occupancy mapping for before and after each phase of refurbishment.
time and location density. These data can provide information, such as
Occupant patterns are valuable in making a occupant density, and can help in finding solutions
decision regarding thermal comfort in the house for reducing electricity and gas consumption.

Intelligent Buildings International 3 (2011)

 Intelligent systems for monitoring energy use and occupancy 31
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The results indicated that the interface software
developed is computationally very efficient and
is able to generate a series of information in
various forms. It is only necessary to choose the
desired parameters, persons and type of graph.
Large quantities of data can be stored in the
database and accessed through the interface
software developed.
It has been proved that the system supplied by
UBISENSE is able to locate and track occupant
location with a high degree of accuracy. Our
results indicated that it is possible to build a tool
that is able to combine the person location data
with environmental and energy consumption
data. Using this method, considerable information
can be obtained and appropriate conclusions can
be drawn. Being a complex study with enormous
data, it is necessary to have a tool that is able to
respond to the changes. In general, a POE study
can have a key role in minimizing energy
consumption and helping existing homes reach
zero-carbon targets. Previous work has shown
that there is a relation between occupants
behaviour and energy consumed in a household.
This fact becomes increasingly important over
time as it can answer the following question
raised by many researchers: Can a zero-carbon
home really be zero carbon if it has energy
wasteful occupants? It is therefore essential to
determine in detail occupants patterns and their
responses and behaviour.
Further investigation into the data is
necessary to highlight with precision trends for
the same periods of time but in different stages
of refurbishment. The method constructed for
this house can be extended to multiple houses.
The real-time data accumulated over time can
be used to develop a tool that is able to predict
possible savings in different types of houses
with different numbers of occupants and in
various types of climate. A detailed investigation
of occupants perceptions will be provided in a
further assessment.
The POE work goal was to explore the
integration of indoor climate, perception
and behaviour of occupants, and energy
performance in one system, allowing the results
obtained to be combined. The patterns of
occupants in a building are of great importance
in simulating the behaviour of occupants within
a building and their effects on the buildings
demands for resources such as electricity, gas
or water, as well as the production of waste.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge the support of the
Research Council UK Energy Programme and
E.ON (UK) who funded this work as part
of a wider research project called Consumer
Appealing Low Energy Technologies for Building
Retrofit (CALEBRE).
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