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A field investigation of the intermediate light switchingby users
David Lindel¨of
∗
and Nicolas MorelSolar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (LESO-PB)EPFL, CH-1015 Lausanne, SwitzerlandJuly 15, 2007
This paper describes how data collected during a continuously running dataacquisition program on the LESO building in Lausanne, Switzerland, was usedto measure the
intermediate light switch probability
by users as a function of current illuminance levels, i.e. the probability for a given timestep that the userwill switch on or off the electric lighting, excluding such actions that happenupon user entry to or exit from the office. We assume such a probabilityto be independent of the user’s history and further derive some theoreticalconsequences of this postulate. In particular, we show how a history-less userleads naturally to patterns of behaviour already observed in real buildings.Keywords: intermediate light switching, visual comfort, Poisson process
1 Introduction
Understanding the way users interact with building services (blinds, electric lighting, cool-ing, ventilation, window opening, etc), and the impact of their use on the building’s totalenergy consumption, helps us attain two goals. First, we may elaborate better models of the user’s behaviour for simulation software that will help building planners to predict andoptimize the energy use or the comfort provided to the user. Secondly, advanced controlalgorithms may use this information to increase their acceptance by users and help achieveenergy savings.Several building simulation software packages that need a good simulation of user’sbahaviour are available (1; 2) or will shortly be (3; 4). The software packages just mentionedare all based on the Lightswitch-2002 algorithm described in (2). An underlying assumption
∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +41 21 693.55.56; fax: +41 21 693.27.22; email: david.lindelof@epfl.ch
1
behind this algorithm is that users use the manual controls at their disposal in a consciousand consistent way, which allows us to predictively model their behaviour.The algorithm seeks also to model the
intermediate light switch-on
probability, i. e. theprobability that a user switches on the artificial lighting without leaving or arriving in theoffice. It uses a probability function that depends on the workplane illuminance, derivedfrom previous work by the author of the algorithm (5). For five-minute timesteps, it findsthat the intermediate switch-on probability is about 5% between 0 and 200 lux workplaneilluminance, and sharply drops to about 0.002 for higher illuminances. One purpose of thispaper is to verify this model.More specifically, we will focus on the following themes concerning lighting actions (day-light or electric lighting):
The lapse of time between the entry of the user into the room and the use of controls,or between use and subsequent exit from the room;
The probability of a user switching on or off the electric lighting as a function of ambient illuminance levels;
The lighting conditions immediately preceding and immediately following a user’saction with the electric lighting;
The correlation between the delay before the user action and the illuminance level.We will also discuss some theoretical consequences of the modelling of users’ actions andtheir relationship to experimentally observed data.
2 User simulation
Some models of user behaviour assume that the time between user actions, given constantenvironmental conditions, is a random variable distributed according to an exponentialdistribution with sole parameter
λ
satisfying
λ
= 1
/T
where
T
is the average time beforethe action. In other words, its probability density function is given by
f
λ
(
t
) =
λ
exp(
−
λt
)
.
This distribution is believed to hold, with different
λ
parameters of course, for most of the user’s actions, such as use of artificial lighting controls, window opening or closing, andexit or arrival.The exponential distribution function is used for modelling the occurence of events rang-ing from earthquakes to phone calls. Similarly, the time remaining until, for instance, theuser’s next opening of windows can be modelled in much the same way as the time remain-ing until the user’s next phone call.This postulate is justified by strong evidence that the number of user actions of a givenkind for constant or near-constant environmental conditions in a given time frame follows2
a Poisson distribution. From that fact follows that the intervals between events are dis-tributed according to an exponential distribution. In the case of user entry and exit, Wang(6), for example, has recently verified experimentally that the duration of user absencesfrom a room indeed follows an exponential distribution.The problem is that environmental conditions are seldom constant in an office. Temper-atures, air quality and illuminance levels change over time. How are we to compute theprobability density function for user events under varying conditions, assuming we knowhow to do so for constant conditions?Consider the example of the use of artificial lighting controls. If we could find a relation-ship between the time a user tolerates given visual conditions and the variables describingthese visual conditions (e.g., the illuminance levels), then we would be in an advantageousposition to simulate the behaviour of the user in a computer simulation of the building.This section will describe how.Let us assume that such a relationship exists between the average time
T
before useraction and the illuminance
E
, and that we have found it. We do not specify this rela-tionship; we are in no position to do so yet. But we assume that the probability densityfunction of the time the user spends before switching on the lights follows the exponentialdistribution, and that its
λ
parameter is given by some function of
E
.We begin at time
t
= 0. What is now the probability
P
(
T
) that the user has
not
turnedon the lights yet at a time
t
=
T
? Let us discretize the time between
t
= 0 and
t
=
T
into
n
equal timesteps ∆
t
=
T/n
. Let us assume that these timesteps are sufficiently smallthat the workplane illuminance can be taken as constant during each timestep, noted
E
i
,with
i
running from 0 to
n
−
1. The corresponding
λ
parameters are noted
λ
i
.The probability that the user did not switch on his lights during the first timestep ishigh because ∆
t
is small, but not quite equal to unity. It is given by
P
(∆
t
) = 1
−
∆
t
0
f
λ
0
(
t
)
dt
= exp(
−
∆
tλ
0
)By the exponential distribution’s lack of memory, the probability that the user did notswitch on the lights between ∆
t
and 2∆
t
knowing that he did not do so between 0 and ∆
t
is similarly equal to exp(
−
∆
tλ
1
), and so on.The probability that the user has not switched on his lights by the time
T
is thus theproduct of all these probabilities. We obtain
P
(
T
) =
n
−
1
i
=0
exp(
−
λ
i
∆
t
)= exp(
−
∆
t
n
−
1
i
=0
λ
i
)= exp(
−
Tλ
)
,
3
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