5G ENSURE has received funding from the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020 under grant agreement No 671562 | Duration November 2015 / October 2017
Submitted by s.parker on January 26, 2016
Office spaces tend to adjust the temperature to how men, not women, sense warmth or cold. It's no wonder women feel cold. But that could soon be a thing of the past with a new solution by VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland. The team behind the solution has found a way of automatically adjusting room temperature as close to the ideal level based on how the people inside sense the temperature. The solution is particularly well suited to offices, hospitals, hotels and retirement homes that need individual conditions.
The difference between people in the same space may be as high as 5 degrees, depending on their muscularity, body fat percentage, weight, age, clothing and level of activity. To reduce these differences, the Research Centre uses an IoT (Internet of Things)-based solutions, with both printed and ordinary sensors. Sensors measure the temperature, relative humidity and human presence in the space where adjustment is needed, and send the data to the cloud via the internet.
Obvious benefits are comfort and enhanced work efficiency, but this could also lead to energy savings by heating and cooling rools only if people are actually using them.
As regard building service systems, room-specific ventilation-based heating is quick to react to desired changes. However, the temperature can also be adjusted in advance on the basis of individual preferences, before the person enters the room.
In the same regard, VTT has been testing wireless humidity sensors, which can be used, for example, in the monitoring of building conditions or in other applications, such as monitoring the state of house plants.
Source: VTT - Individual temperature control increases productivity and saves energy
