Energy Demand Patterns in an Office Building: A Case Study in Kraków (Southern Poland)

Abstract

Office buildings play a significant role in shaping the current electricity demand and its trends. Their energy demand patterns impact the power system operation on a national and regional level. What is more, both (office buildings and the power system) are also simultaneously influenced by meteorological parameters. Considering the above, the aim of this paper is to analyze a three-year hourly energy demand time series recorded in a relatively large office building in Kraków (Southern Poland). This paper will fill a gap in the literature as there is a lack of evidence from Central European countries in the area of office buildings' energy demand and its relationship with meteorological parameters. The data was obtained from a local electricity provider whereas meteorological parameters came from weather station and satellite measurements. The analyses focused on determining the typical weekly and daily demand patterns as well as on investigating the correlation between meteorological parameters (wind speed, irradiation, humidity, and air temperature) and observed energy consumption. To estimate the correlation between investigated variables, a Pearson coefficient of correlation was used. For distinguishing typical load patterns, a k-means clustering method was applied. The relationship between meteorological parameters and load was also tested based on multiple linear regression analysis. The results indicated that energy demand had a relatively strong positive correlation with irradiation and with temperature and a negative one with humidity. The correlation with wind speed was not greater than 0.25. Dividing the data into three subsets shows that energy demand generally exhibits a stronger correlation with meteorological parameters on working days. Additionally, clustering analysis has shown that it is possible to distinguish three typical daily patterns of energy demand and meteorological parameters that correspond to a hot/warm day, cold days and days that are intermediary between those two. The regression analysis showed that meteorological parameters can explain/model a significant part of the load variability (up to 50%) although the quality of such models is relatively poor (in terms of mean absolute percentage error the best model exhibited a value of 16%). The results of this study can be used as a benchmark for similar office buildings that received the same level of sustainability certification, or in the future analysis of climate change impact on power demand.

Influence of User Behavior on Energy Consumption and Its Relation With Comfort. A Case Study Based on Sensor and Crowd-Sensed Data

“…Building energy behavior tends to show some typical annual, weekly and daily patterns (Mikulik, 2018), thus in order to measure and compare possible differences in user behavior and energy consumption patterns in different time periods, the experiment was divided into two phases. The rst one covered a four-week period in July 2019 and a four-week period in February 2020.…”

Energy self-consumption from PV systems: estimations for two office buildings in Krakow (Poland)

“…It must be noted that this potential of PV systems to reduce peak demand is strongly dependent on the match between electricity demand and supply. It is naturally recommended that office buildings with big air-conditioning units should be equipped with PV systems to reduce their impact on the load curve on the national level [5].…”

“…As indicated in the previous paragraph, a huge potential lies in the utilization of PV systems. A recent paper by Mikulik [5] shows that office buildings in Poland are starting to play a significant role as energy consumers. Even more importantly, their energy demand is strongly dependent on meteorological parameters, and positively correlated with irradiation (a driving factor of PV energy generation) [5].…”

“…A recent paper by Mikulik [5] shows that office buildings in Poland are starting to play a significant role as energy consumers. Even more importantly, their energy demand is strongly dependent on meteorological parameters, and positively correlated with irradiation (a driving factor of PV energy generation) [5]. The need to investigate the role of PV systems in office buildings is even higher, as a paper by Jurasz and Campana [6] shows that, in case of energy tariffs in Poland, PV systems can significantly reduce the energy cost in office buildings.…”

Analysis of the Impact of Different Variables on the Energy Demand in Office Buildings

“…Much of the research has been based on software which simulates the energy behaviour of buildings using tools such as Energy Plus, TRNSYS and ESPr o DOE2 [16,17], while other research has been based on regulatory systems of energy classification and labelling and its associated software [18][19][20].…”