Gail Brager, Andy Brooks, Dana Miller, Sebastian Cohn, Gwelen Paliaga, David Douglass-Jaimes, Therese Peffer, Sonja Salo, Mia Nakajima, Lindsay T. Graham, Paul Raftery, Mitch Greene, Marta Delgado, Hui Zhang, University of California Berkeley, Department of Mechanical Engineering, TRC Companies, Association for Energy Affordability, Aalto-yliopisto, and Aalto University
Funding Information: This research was supported by the California Energy Commission (CEC) Electric Program Investment Charge grant EPC-16-013, with cost share provided by Big Ass Fans, and cost share and additional support from Center for the Built Environment. We are thankful to many additional people who were involved in and contributed to this research project. At the CBE: Edward Arens, Fred Bauman, Wenhua Chen, Carlos Duarte, Yingdong He, Maohui Luo, Yang Li, Amy Mostacho, Jovan Pantelic, Tom Parkinson, Elaina Present, Stefano Schiavon, and Wang Zi. At TRC: Kristen Bellows and Abhijeet Pande. At the UC Berkeley Buildings, Energy, and Transportation Systems lab in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: Gabe Fierro and Michael Andersen for the Hamilton dataloggers and associated server. At Big Ass Fans: Jay Fizer, Michael Harp, Pete Maley, Justin Risner, Michael Smith, Christian Taber, Jayme Webb, Oleg Dantchenko, Funding Information: This research was supported by the California Energy Commission (CEC) Electric Program Investment Charge grant EPC-16-013, with cost share provided by Big Ass Fans, and cost share and additional support from Center for the Built Environment. We are thankful to many additional people who were involved in and contributed to this research project. At the CBE: Edward Arens, Fred Bauman, Wenhua Chen, Carlos Duarte, Yingdong He, Maohui Luo, Yang Li, Amy Mostacho, Jovan Pantelic, Tom Parkinson, Elaina Present, Stefano Schiavon, and Wang Zi. At TRC: Kristen Bellows and Abhijeet Pande. At the UC Berkeley Buildings, Energy, and Transportation Systems lab in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: Gabe Fierro and Michael Andersen for the Hamilton dataloggers and associated server. At Big Ass Fans: Jay Fizer, Michael Harp, Pete Maley, Justin Risner, Michael Smith, Christian Taber, Jayme Webb, Oleg Dantchenko, David Walton, and installers and electricians. This research would not have been possible without the support of staff and facility managersat all of the field sites, and we are grateful for their collaboration. This work used computational resources from the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562, specifically the Jetstream cloud compute resources at Indiana University through allocation ECS180009. Funding Information: David Walton, and installers and electricians. This research would not have been possible without the support of staff and facility managers at all of the field sites, and we are grateful for their collaboration. This work used computational resources from the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562, specifically the Jetstream cloud compute resources at Indiana University through allocation ECS180009. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s) Controlled air movement is an effective strategy for maintaining occupant comfort while reducing energy consumption, since comfort at moderately warmer temperatures requires less space cooling. Modern ceiling fans provide a 2–4 °C cooling effect at power consumption comparable to LED lightbulbs (2–30 W) with gentle air speeds (0.5–1 m/s). However, very limited design guidance and performance data are available for using ceiling fans and air conditioning together, especially in commercial buildings. We present results from a 29-month field study of 99 automated ceiling fans and 12 thermostats installed in ten air-conditioned buildings in a hot/dry climate in California. Staging ceiling fans to automatically cool before, and then operate together with air conditioning enabled raising air conditioning cooling temperature setpoints in most zones, with overall positive occupant interview and survey responses. Overall measured cooling season (April– October) compressor energy savings were 36%, normalized by floor area served (41% during summer peak billing hours). Weather-normalized changes in zone energy use varied from 24% increase to 73% decrease across 13 compressors, reflecting variation in occupant schedules and other uncontrolled factors in occupied buildings. Median weather-normalized energy savings per compressor were 21%. Staging ceiling fans and air conditioning provided comfort across a wider temperature range, using less energy, than air conditioning alone.