Ryozo Ooka, Madhavi Indraganti and Hom B Rijal
Year:
2014
Bibliographic info:
8th Windsor Conference, 10-13 April, 2014, Windsor UK

Japan’s energy perspective underwent a paradigm shift after the 2011 earthquake. It put in place the ‘setsuden’ (energy saving) campaign. This recommended minimum and maximum temperature settings for summer and winter, without enough empirical evidence. Many large offices adhered to these, often running them in naturally ventilated (NV) mode. In this context, we surveyed four buildings in Tokyo in summer 2012.  About 435 participants provided 2042 sets of data. It contained thermal responses, simultaneous environmental recordings and observations on the use of controls. This paper discusses the comfort temperature and focuses on the occupant behaviour. We found the comfort temperature to be 27.0 °C and 27.4 °C in NV and air-conditioned (AC) modes respectively.  Occupants adaptively operated the windows, doors and fans. Logistic regression predicted 80% fan usage at 28 °C of indoor temperature. Offices in AC mode had higher CO2 level.  Many design, operational and behavioural factors hindered adaptive control operation.