HVAC systems and thermal comfort in buildings climate control: An experimental case study

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems provide the people working/living inside buildings with ‘conditioned air’ so that they will have a comfortable and safe environment. Thermal comfort is considered as an aspect of a sustainable building in almost all sustainable building evaluation methods and tools. In fact, in the building sector, HVAC systems represent between 40 and 60% of energy consumption. In this paper, two thermal comfort methods have been experimentally analysed (Predicted Mean Vote or the so-called Fanger’s method, and the Adaptive Comfort Method). The measurement campaign was divided into two stages. In an initial stage, HVAC electrical consumption, indoor temperature, carbon dioxide concentration, relative humidity, global horizontal irradiance, and outdoor temperature were measured through controlled conditions, performing a considerable number of tests in 112 days, covering all seasons. Later, in a second phase, with the experimental data, the two thermal comfort methods were calculated analytically. In both cases, the main conclusion is that – when the HVAC system was working with minimum energy consumption – more than 80% of the possible occupants would be satisfied with the indoor temperature, by more than 90% of the time.