An analysis of the impact of PMV-based thermal comfort control during heating period: A case study of highly glazed room

International audienceLow energy consumption buildings are rapidly spreading over Europe. Its underlying concept is based on improving the building envelope, and using high efficiency equipment. However, thermal comfort in such buildings is still questionable. Recently, advanced comfort-based control strategies have been proposed in order to fulfill a tradeoff between energy-saving and occupants comfort as well as reduce additional investments compared to conventional energy reduction solutions. Though few studies focused on the European climate conditions during a heating period, this study aims at investigating the sensitivity of energy-saving potential to outdoor climatic conditions and identifying the significant parameters affecting the heating energy consumption in a comfort-controlled highly glazed room under a European climatic condition. A validated model is used to carry out a comparative building simulation study between PMV-based comfort-control and conventional thermostatic-control, as well as a sensitivity study based on the Design of Experiments technique. The results show that PMV-based comfort-control is a reasonable solution to neutralize the trade-off between thermal comfort and heating energy consumption under the investigated European winter season. Moreover, the results demonstrate that energy consumption using the comfort-control is more sensitive to outdoor climatic conditions than the thermostatic-control. Furthermore, the results show that energy consumption in a comfort-controlled space is highly sensitive to occupants-related parameters (metabolic rate and clothing level) and the mean radiant temperature compared to other parameters, such as relative humidity. Finally, a meta-model is obtained to be used as a fast and simple way to predict the energy consumption in a comfort-controlled room