The role of occupant’s behaviors in high performance social housing

The enhancement of buildings energy performance is a priority in Europe because of the high incidence of the building stock on the final energy consumption. The re-search about energy saving includes modeling the actual interactions among building, occupants and energy systems. In this regard, the effect of occupants’ behavior on the building energy needs have a significant impact on naturally ventilated buildings andwhenever users can interact (or tamper) with HVAC controls. Moreover, the effect of occupants’ behavior becomes more relevant with increasing energy performances. In this paper, we compare the measured energy consumption of a high performance social house against the predictions of a calibrated simulation model. A dynamic energy simu-lation model with standard user profiles is used to predict the energy needs of several apartments. Then these predictions are compared against the measured data of the energy meters. Finally, after the quantification of the performance gap, the relationship between occupant behaviors and building energy demand is assessed. Results highlight the role of occupant habitual behaviors and especially the high impact of windows opening on the building energy demand.