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Genie: A Longitudinal Study Comparing Physical and Software-augmented Thermostats in Office Buildings

Bharathan Balaji,Jason Koh,Nadir Weibel,Y. Agarwal

Published 2016 in arXiv.org

ABSTRACT

Thermostats are primary interfaces for occupants of office buildings to express their comfort preferences. However, standard thermostats are often ineffective due to inaccessibility, lack of information, or limited responsiveness, leading to occupant discomfort. Software thermostats based on web or smartphone applications provide alternative interfaces to occupants with minimal deployment cost. However, their usage and effectiveness have not been studied extensively in real settings. In this paper we present Genie, a novel software-augmented thermostat that we deployed and studied at our university over a period of 21 months. Our data shows that providing wider thermal control to users does not lead to system abuse and that the effect on energy consumption is minimal while improving comfort and energy awareness. We believe that increased introduction of software thermostats in office buildings will have important effects on comfort and energy consumption and we provide key design recommendations for their implementation and deployment.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2016

  • Venue

    arXiv.org

  • Publication date

    2016-01-26

  • Fields of study

    Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Science

  • Identifiers
    arXiv 1601.07229
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

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