Practical use of CO2 sensors for early life cycle energy and comfort performance

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Session 2 Paper 2, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, 14-15 April 2016

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Post-occupancy commissioning for comfort and energy consumption requires knowledge of real occupancy patterns to assess efficiency of control strategies in use. CO2 has proven to be a useful proxy for occupation density. However the currently proposed methods require training periods and accurate sensor calibration, which would not be justified for short term measurements on newly occupied buildings.

In this paper we present a method to estimate real occupancy patterns based on simple CO2 concentration variations detection. Wireless CO2 sensors have been installed in a teaching room. It is demonstrated that variations of CO2 concentration give a useful insight on the use of spaces and can help commissioning engineers and facility management to remotely detect mismatches between control strategies and occupants’ use of a building.