Abstract
Three houses of similar floor plan are being compared for energy consumption. The first house is a typical builder house of 2400 ft2 (223 m2) in east Tennessee. The second house contains retrofits available to a home owner such as energy efficient appliances, windows and HVAC, as well as an insulated attic which contains HVAC duct work. The third house was built using optimum-value framing construction with photovoltaic modules and solar water heating. To consume energy researchers have set up appliances, lights, and plug loads to turn on and off automatically according to a schedule based on the Building America Research Benchmark Definition. As energy efficiency continues to be a focus for protecting the environment and conserving resources, experiments involving whole house energy consumption will be done. In these cases it is important to understand how to simulate occupancy so that data represents only house performance and not human behavior. The process for achieving automated occupancy simulation will be discussed. Data comparing the energy use of each house will be presented and it will be shown that the third house used 66% less and the second house used 36% less energy than the control house in 2010. The authors will discuss how energy prudent living habits can further reduce energy use in the third house by 23% over the average American family living in the same house.
