Monitoring occupancy and office equipment energy consumption using real-time location system and wireless energy meters

Buildings are one of the major energy consumers because of the need to meet occupants requirements. The commercial/institutional sector accounted for 14% of total energy consumption in Canada in 2009 while office buildings consumed 35% of this amount. Auxiliary equipment used 19% of the total energy consumed in office buildings. Previous studies showed the impact of occupancy behavior on IT equipment energy consumption. This paper proposes a new method for monitoring occupant behavior and energy consumption of IT equipment. Analyzing the resulting data can help evaluating the occupancy behavior impact on energy saving. Two wireless sensor technologies are investigated to collect the required data and to build an occupancy behavior estimation profile: Ultra-Wideband Real-Time Location System for occupancy location monitoring and Zigbee wireless energy meters for monitoring the energy consumption of IT equipment. The occupancy behavior estimation profile can be used to reduce energy consumption based on real-time occupants´ information.