Want to Reduce Energy Consumption, Which Floor Should I Prefer?

Priyanka Mary Mammen, Surabhi Mehrotra, Hareesh Kumar, Krithi Ramamritham

Abstract: With a rampant increase in the urban population, especially in megacities, the number of high rise buildings is increasing rapidly. Both high rise buildings and lifestyle changes have resulted in high energy consumption. Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) contribute the most to energy consumption in high-rise buildings. As thermal comfort is the major driving factor for the functioning of HVAC systems in a space, it is essential to understand how indoor environmental conditions vary across buildings' dimensions. Traditional approaches rely on simulations to understand the spatial and temporal variations of indoor conditions. Visualization offers opportunities to find solutions for complex thermal variations in buildings because of variation in environmental conditions owing to orientation, height, etc. In this paper, we adopt a data-driven approach that considers the difference in indoor temperature depending on the floor level in a building. Temperature sensors kept on different floors in a building lead to real-time observations. The visualization from Open source Visualization Platform' (Grafana) revealed interesting variations in temperature at different floors of a high-rise building, based on which recommendations could be made to reduce energy consumption.