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Computing Research Repository, January 2016

Genie: A Longitudinal Study Comparing Physical and Software-augmented Thermostats in Office Buildings

A 21-month deployment of a web-based software thermostat in university offices, finding wider occupant control caused no abuse and minimal energy impact.

Bharathan Balaji, Jason Koh, Nadir Weibel, Yuvraj Agarwal
Computing Research Repository, January 2016
Paper arXiv
The Genie web interface for an office, showing room energy use and temperature, HVAC on/off and setpoint controls, schedules, and a thermal comfort feedback bar.
The Genie web interface for an office, showing room energy use and temperature, HVAC on/off and setpoint controls, schedules, and a thermal comfort feedback bar.

Abstract

Thermostats are primary interfaces for occupants of office buildings to express their comfort preferences. However, standard thermostats are often ineffective due to inaccessibility, lack of information, or limited responsiveness, leading to occupant discomfort. Software thermostats based on web or smartphone applications provide alternative interfaces to occupants with minimal deployment cost. However, their usage and effectiveness have not been studied extensively in real settings. In this paper we present Genie, a novel software-augmented thermostat that we deployed and studied at our university over a period of 21 months. Our data shows that providing wider thermal control to users does not lead to system abuse and that the effect on energy consumption is minimal while improving comfort and energy awareness. We believe that increased introduction of software thermostats in office buildings will have important effects on comfort and energy consumption and we provide key design recommendations for their implementation and deployment.

Bibtex

@article{DBLP:journals/corr/BalajiKWA16,
  author    = {Bharathan Balaji and
               Jason Koh and
               Nadir Weibel and
               Yuvraj Agarwal},
  title     = {Genie: {A} Longitudinal Study Comparing Physical and Software-augmented
               Thermostats in Office Buildings},
  journal   = {CoRR},
  volume    = {abs/1601.07229},
  year      = {2016},
  url       = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.07229},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  eprint    = {1601.07229},
  timestamp = {Mon, 13 Aug 2018 16:46:11 +0200},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/journals/corr/BalajiKWA16},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}

Plain Text

Balaji, Bharathan, et al. "Genie: A Longitudinal Study Comparing Physical and Software-augmented Thermostats in Office Buildings." arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.07229 (2016).