Development and Evaluation of Ease of Commissioning of HVAC-Connected Occupancy Sensor Systems in Buildings.

Building energy consumption is strongly influenced by occupants and their energy use patterns. As such, there has been an increasing focus in recent years on the development and use of various sensing technologies to accurately infer occupancy information, which can be used to control building systems more efficiently such as lighting and HVAC. However, few studies have considered how to evaluate the ease of installation of such occupancy sensor systems, to support integration into a building's systems and controls. Thus, in this research, the concept of ease of commissioning (EOC) is proposed, which is a methodology to assess the ease at which an occupancy sensor system can (a) be brought into operation (including integration into a building's HVAC system) from out of the box to fully operational, and (b) continuously operate over time. The focus of this research is on the development of an EOC methodology and rating framework, based on a combination of a literature review, and analysis of both product reviews of off-the-shelf occupancy sensor systems to determine sensor feature preferences for installation and commissioning, and metrics used to evaluate other types of smart sensor systems. The developed method evaluates occupancy sensor systems based on several categories: (a) installation, (b) connection, (c) communication, and (d) power. Within each of these categories, several metrics are evaluated using a rubric-style evaluation method, which are then used to summarize both categorical ease-of-commissioning evaluation metrics, and an overall metric. As case studies, four occupancy sensor systems were evaluated using this EOC evaluation methodology. This study provides initial guidance for developing a universal ease of commissioning evaluation methodology of occupancy sensor systems, to help potential users better understand the relative challenges of installation and operational performance of implementing an occupancy sensor system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]