From social science surveys to building energy modeling: Investigating user-building interaction for low-carbon heating solutions in Europe

An extensive, representative, and, multi-country tailored survey questionnaire eliciting social practices with heat as an energy service and the relative perceptions about heating devices was submitted to a randomized sample of more than 6,000 potential end-users in Europe within the framework of the Horizon 2020 project SWS-HEATING. The project is developing an innovative seasonal thermal energy storage unit for residential use. Moreover, within the project, the role of occupancy variability and use conditions in the performance of the proposed system is assessed. The present study focuses on tailormade user-building interaction models to be implemented into dynamic simulation for the assessment of the proposed and similar systems starting from the sociological assessment of such large-scale survey results. These models take advantage from the knowledge raised by the findings of the social survey to frame for the first time occupants' behavior scenarios representative of South, central, and North European countries. In this way, the influence of cultural context and demographic factors and their relation to heating practices are considered when developing these tailored occupant behavior models. Results show the non-negligible influence (up to 43% in the coldest climate) of implementing these models on predicted building heating energy needs, as quantitative demonstration of the role of societal-related variables on final energy use estimation.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.