Evaluation of Personalized Thermal Conditioning Chair in Net Zero Energy Building Office

Abstract

The net Zero Energy Building (ZEB) aims to promote a productive working environment with high occupant satisfaction while minimizing energy input. Personal air-conditioning is a technology which can significantly contribute to ZEB. In this paper, we evaluate the improvement to occupant satisfaction from the use of a personalized thermal conditioning chair (TCC). In our results: (i) The TCC can change the equivalent temperature by –0.7 to 1.2°C. (ii) Users controlled the TCCs according to their thermal comfort. Users chose cooling mode mainly in summer and heating mode in winter according to environmental changes in the ZEB office. (iii) The TCC was controlled to maintain the user’s preferred thermal environment. This resulted in the surrounding temperature of each user during TCC operation to vary. (iv) The thermal comfort survey from users converged to “neutral”. This shows that users felt improved comfort from the ability to control their own thermal environment.