Interactive Design to Encourage Energy Efficiency in Offices: Developing and Testing a User-Centered Building Management System Based on a Living Lab Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is too long, lacks enough quality and is too hard to read.

There are too many references and most of them are too old.

The novelty of the study should be clarified.

The usefulness of the study should be highlighted.

The study has several limitations and it should be conducted properly.

The temperature is below 10ºC in Berlin from November to March, but the monitoring was made from February to May.

How were made the simulations?

What software was used?

What are the main characteristics of the building studied?

What are the heating systems used?

What are the control systems used?

Could the testing be made for a year at least?

Saving potential should be assessed properly.

Why did not the authors assess the heating energy demand?

In Figure 5, no interaction with Piaf was from February to May, but the interaction with Piaf was December to April. Why did not the authors use similar periods?

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

 

Thank you for your comments. The editor did not request a response for this part.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

In the article “Interactive Design to Encourage Energy Efficiency in Offices: Developing and Testing a User-Centred Building Management System Based on a Living Lab Approach” the issue of the energy savings resulting from the meeting user’s needs is raised. The work is a continuation of the previous work in the same field. The paper combines social and emotional elements with energy efficiency issues in buildings. This results in a certain difficulty in assessing this type of work by engineers. From the applied science point of view, the article does not make a new contribution to the issues of modeling / simulation / computational techniques / the use of new tools or the improvement of the previous ones in terms of heat and mass exchange, energy efficiency, HVAC systems etc. Scientific methods are also questionable (from the applied energy issues point of view). Nevertheless, the device presented in the article certainly helps to achieve energy efficiency thanks to the interaction of the HVAC system with the user, and thus the better adaptation of the HVAC system to the user's needs. For these reasons, I believe that the article should be considered for publication after minor revision.

1) Please clearly and extensively describe the investigated field. From your previous article one can know that rooms with natural ventilation are taken into account. There are many possibilities to save the energy in buildings. You are focused on the single chosen one. Therefore, in my opinion you should clearly describe the investigated case. Please make a graph with a room, indicate the boundary conditions, airflows, the connections between the device and HVAC system. Please describe in the text what kind of building and system you are investigating.

For me, the analysis of window opening is surprising in the era of, for example, the possibility of installing wall recuperators with an air intake and a launcher located in the facade of the building. While on the other hand I understand that improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings is a challenge now (it is not enough that new buildings are energy efficient, you have to start doing something with the old ones) and it is worth looking at different scenarios and ways to improve.

Maybe mentioning the systems with windows, you could also mention that an alternative is the single-room ventilation system with heat recovery and controlled by CO2 concentration measurement in room, to make the reader aware of other solutions in this field?

2) For investigated case od buildings please specify all important parameters. The U value of walls, location in relation to the directions of the world, unit heat demand, the number of people moving around in the room, the schedule of their stay, air tightness of the room and other characteristic information that will allow the reader to imagine what kind of buildings are mentioned. In my opinion, it is important to know such information. Particularly thermal insulation of partitions can be important for the feeling of comfort - it is easier to achieve when opaque partitions and windows are characterized by high insulation.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has greatly improved, to the extent that I hardly recognized it when I received the invitation to re-review. The authors’ effort is acknowledged. The article’s scope is now clear and the study is interesting. I have some comments on specific parts of the manuscript:

Line 41: References [2-3] are not related to "codes and appliance standards", as the text implies.

Lines 41-42: “lifestyle and individual behaviour can increase energy demand by up to 20% in the short term and up to 50% by mid-century”. This statement is incorrect. The source document states the opposite: "For developed countries, scenarios indicate that lifestyle and behavioural changes could reduce energy demand by up to 20% in the short term and by up to 50% of present levels by mid-century."

Line 49: “It has shown that the ventilation…” The sentence is missing a “been” after “has”. Please check the entire manuscript for similar typos.

Lines 138-139: The word “According” is not properly used here, and in other sentences across the manuscript. Please check this.

Line 321 and all lines where “simulation” is mentioned: Please note that what you describe is not a simulation. It is a (rough) estimation of energy savings considering only the indoor-outdoor temperature difference. This cannot be characterized as a simulation, which requires an -as precise as possible- imitation of the process in question (in this case it would be the energy balance of the building).

Lines 335-336: “rising outdoor temperature between the range of minus 335 10 °C to plus 20 °C leads to rising room temperatures”: The analysis here and the graphs include outdoor temperatures>15 °C. Is this because the average temperature is still bellow the 15 °C threshold to be considered heating season? It just seems to me that the analysis includes non-heating season, where high correlation between indoor-outdoor temperature is expected. There are too many datapoints at around 20 °C outdoor temperature for this to be within the heating season.

Line 370: “The findings show that realizing potential energy savings of up to 20% can be archived when applying a user-oriented approach of building management system (BMS).” I don’t understand where this finding and % come from. This is important to clarify, as the number is mentioned in the abstract and needs to be backed-up properly.

Line 489: “which enabled to identify the heating practices.”: do you mean ventilation practices here?

Line 491: The sentence needs rewriting. Proofreading of the manuscript would be good (only a few issues but it would help).

Lines 519-529: “and thus can provide more comfort with lower energy input”. Is there evidence from your data that the approach led to lower energy use? I understand that there were occasions that users would open the window at low CO2 levels before the implementation of Piaf, but typically we see an increase in window opening when CO2 displays are used which on one hand improve air quality but on the other increase ventilation heat losses, hence energy use.

Lines 548-549: “because the natural office ventilation of the passive house (Building A) did not require additional ventilation practices” (sentence is a bit broken too). Passive house buildings always include mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, which means that in the heating season there is hardly any window opening (it is strongly discouraged). Why did you conduct the experiment in such a building?

The Piaf narrative was a delight to read.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx