Impact of user habits in smart home control

Lifestyle and habits of users have a direct effect on the energy performance of dwellings and facilities. Hence, in the built environment, advanced control strategies must adapt to user behaviors trying to keep a commitment between energy consumption and comfort requirements. In previous works, the suitability of predictive control based on occupancy profiles for the optimization of HVAC systems has been shown. Resting upon this basis, the present work performs a sensitivity analysis for control strategies based on usage profiles, where the input under variation is the level of habit-regularity of users. Therefore, different hypothetical user models are created and tested. The results of this analysis provide a better understanding of how user behavior affects the energy and comfort performance in dwellings under smart control and paves the way for enhanced controller design.