Energy saving and thermal comfort performance of air conditioners incorporating distributed environmental sensing by wireless sensor network

Abstract

Appropriate spatial temperature sensing is recognized as one of the main challenges for thermostats used in air conditioners. In this study, a motivation is emerged to change this return-air-sensing by integrating the concept of distributed environment sensing toward the air-conditioning system (DES-A/C). An improved A/C system was established incorporating distributed environmental sensing by wireless sensor networks. Experimental research with two different treatments, single-point and multi-point user-neighborhood sensing, has been conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of this concept. It has been revealed that DES-A/C could save 43% energy compared to conventional A/C. In addition, DES-A/C could maintain the predicted mean vote (PMV) index in satisfaction range (−1 < PMV < +1) and predicted percentage of dissatisfied index no more than 27.5%.