Modelling study: Reducing Gird Emission Intensity in UK Offices while Keeping Occupants Comfortable

The need to reduce energy demand at peak time has become one of the priorities in the quest to reduce gird emission intensity. This study focuses on demand side management from office buildings in the UK. Specifically it is developing and testing heating and cooling demand scenarios to reduce emission intensity while simultaneously supporting occupants’ thermal comfort. Design Builder software was used to simulate thermal conditions and energy consumption of four typical office buildings during different operation strategies and for different building fabric improvement following BREEAM guidelines. While applying predictive and adaptive thermal comfort targets with HVAC scheduling developed in the study, results show that HVAC control strategy in off-peak time and enhancement of building fabric can reduce energy demand at peak-time. Electricity intensity is reduced simultaneously as well as carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, with the impact of climate change, the strategy is expected to provide larger benefits in the future. Keywords: Building energy demand, Thermal comfort, Prediction and simulation.