Design and Evaluation of a “Smart Individual Room Heating IS” to improve comfort and save energy in residential buildings

Large amounts of energy are wasted due to unnecessary space heating in residential buildings,i.e. by heating rooms (or whole dwellings) even thoughresidents do not occupy them. Several studies have shown that the major reason for this behaviour is the poor usability and understanding of current heating controls.For that reason,most peoplealsoprefer to adapt their thermal comfort by changing clothes or opening windowsas their principal action, instead of adjusting the heating.Following the recent development of “smart” thermostats, we addressthe aforementioned challenges by developing anheating IS withbetter controls and comprehensive heating feedbackto empower residents to adapt heating radiatorsin their rooms to their needs.In this work, we present the requirement analysis, im-plementation and field test evaluation of a novel smart individual room heatingprototype.The system combines an intuitive user interface, supporting feedback and automation capabilities.We demon-stratethat such a new generation of heating controls indeed improves usability and understanding and thereby leads to lower setpoints by 2-3°Celsiuson average, which could enable significant energy savings.