Occupancy measurement systems to identify human presence : A compilation of modern technologies and applications for determining human presence in residential buildings and how it can be used to create energy efficient homes

Sammanfattning: In Sweden, heating accounts for approximately half of the total energy consumption in the residential sector. Houses are often unoccupied during a large part of the day, which reduces demand for comfortable heat- and ventilation levels. Utilizing such a gap in demand, and reducing ventilation and heating during unoccupied hours, could reduce energy consumption by 30-42 %. This possibility raises the need for a robust and accurate way to measure occupancy and control HVAC. There are several techniques, both fully developed as well as those in idea stage, to measure human occupancy and each one of them has unique characteristics in terms of technical properties, accuracy and cost with varying suitability for implementation. This work contributes to the current research on this field by compiling existing literature and comparing different technologies to each other based on a number of aspects. Furthermore, associated privacy concerns associated with some of the covered sensor technologies are discussed and hopefully, this work will serve as the basis for future decisions on what type of sensor technology to be used in some selected projects at KTH.