Assessing Energy Performance and Thermal Satisfaction of Flexible Space Usage in Office Buildings

The tradeoffs between energy efficiency and thermal comfort in office buildings have been studied for decades. To date, researchers have proposed various strategies, such as occupant-based control strategies and personal comfort systems. Notably, operations of office buildings are embracing flexible work arrangements which allow occupant mobility, especially in the post-pandemic era. Research efforts on space recommendation strategies that match the needs of personal thermal preferences with different space conditions have been explored. However, existing literature lacks simultaneous quantification of energy consumption and thermal comfort at the whole building level when implementing flexible space usage. This paper quantitatively evaluates the influence of space match strategies on energy performance and thermal satisfaction in three typical office buildings of different sizes using the summer season. Our results demonstrate up to 22% cooling electricity savings and 15.7% increase in comfort probability across all simulated scenarios. These findings indicate that implementing space match strategies could improve building performance in both energy efficiency and thermal comfort to varying degrees.