Is anyone home? A critical review of occupant-centric smart HVAC controls implementations in residential buildings

Smart home technologies have long been envisioned as a mainstay in future residential buildings; however, residential smart home technologies have fallen short of expectations. Generally referred to by the literature as occupant-centric controls (OCC), a subset of these technologies focus on sensing...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Building and environment 2021-01, Vol.187, p.107369, Article 107369
Main Authors: Stopps, Helen, Huchuk, Brent, Touchie, Marianne F., O'Brien, William
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Smart home technologies have long been envisioned as a mainstay in future residential buildings; however, residential smart home technologies have fallen short of expectations. Generally referred to by the literature as occupant-centric controls (OCC), a subset of these technologies focus on sensing and/or managing systems based on occupant feedback, preferences, or perceptions. While past reviews have documented OCC applications in commercial and industrial building types, residential applications have been rarely distinguished as their own unique application of OCC. This article critically reviews the state-of-the art research in both simulation and field-experiments – neither of which fully align with existing commercial smart home OCC technologies. Study demographics, location, building systems, implementation objectives, and experimental methods are compared and critiqued to understand where research, through simulation and field-experiments, needs to be focused. Key identified shortcomings include: low diversity of studied building systems, overly simplified simulation scenarios, short durations of field testing, inappropriate choices of occupant types, and non-standardized implementation performance metrics and test cases. Furthermore, innovation is hampered by limited standardization in technology communication protocols, the inability to integrate systems from different manufacturers, missing technology transfer protocols to translate researched implementations into commercial applications, and a lack of vision and planning for future policies and technologies that enable effective and comprehensive smart home implementations. •Simulation and field research on residential occupant-centric controls is reviewed.•Research findings are hard to compare due to non-standardized metrics and test cases.•Test cases are often simplified; short in duration; or use atypical occupants.•Lack of interoperability of technologies from different manufacturers is limiting.•Innovation is hampered by a lack of vision for comprehensive smart home implementations.
ISSN:0360-1323
1873-684X
DOI:10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.107369