Increasing the Energy Efficiency of Buildings through On-Body Supplemental Heating

Team: Lucy Dunne, Co-Director Wearable Technology Lab - On-body heating systems
Rolf Jacobson, Research Fellow CSBR - building energy efficiency

Program: Wearable Technology Lab, Center for Sustainable Building Research

Can on-body heating using powered thermal garments help increase the energy efficiency of buildings through lower space temperatures while maintaining occupant comfort?

This study explored the energy savings potential of on-body heating devices across a wide variety of building types, sizes, and vintages, using basic energy simulations of DOE reference buildings. Simple assumptions were made regarding usage of the devices and the operational parameters of the building’s space conditioning equipment.  Setpoint temperatures were reduced to 60F during occupied hours (55F during unoccupied hours) with the goal of reducing heating energy consumption, while 100% of occupants were assumed to wear on-body heating devices to maintain personal comfort.

These devices were found to save significant amounts of energy at standard occupancy rates in all test buildings, suggesting that this concept could be a valuable tool to help achieve energy efficiency goals.  Heat load and occupant density impacted energy savings potential, with higher heat loads and lower occupant densities generally resulting in greater potential energy savings. This suggests that older buildings with poor thermal envelopes and/or low efficiency mechanical equipment could make good targets for application of this technology, as could large buildings with low numbers of occupants (such as warehouses), or regular periods of low occupancy (such as a theater).