Energy-Efficient Thermostats for Room-Level Air Conditioning

TL;DR

This paper proposes enhanced thermostats for room-level air conditioners that incorporate weather data and user feedback, significantly reducing energy consumption and improving occupant comfort.

Contribution

It introduces grey-box modeling techniques to improve thermostat control, integrating external factors and providing actionable feedback for energy efficiency.

Findings

23% reduction in occupant discomfort

26% decrease in AC energy use during power-saving mode

Enhanced control improves user experience and energy efficiency

Abstract

Room-level air conditioners (also referred as ACs) consume a significant proportion of total energy in residential and small-scale commercial buildings. In a typical AC, occupants specify their comfort requirements by manually setting the desired temperature on the thermostat. Though commercial thermostats (such as Tado) provide basic energy-saving features, they neither consider the influence of external factors (such as weather) to set the thermostat temperature nor offer advanced features such as monitoring the fitness level of AC. In this paper, we discuss grey-box modeling techniques to enhance existing thermostats for energy-efficient control of the ACs and provide actionable and corrective feedback to the users. Our study indicates that the enhancements can reduce occupants' discomfort by 23% when maximising the user experience, and reduce AC energy consumption by 26% during the power-saving mode.