Individually air-conditioned offices increase well-being
Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne show that personalized climate control can increase employee comfort while saving energy at the same time. It provides individual cooling or heating for each desk in the office.
People feel differently comfortable under the same temperature conditions. This has now been confirmed by measurements by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne ( EPFL ) in a normal office environment. They collected thermophysiological data from test subjects. According to a statement by the EPFL, they show that age and gender influence metabolism. And this in turn can vary depending on diet, season and daily rhythm.
Air conditioners are currently designed for space, not people, explains Dolaana Khovalyg, assistant professor at EPFL’s Faculty of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering and head of the Integrated Comfort Engineering Laboratory . 80 percent of employees feel comfortable with an average office temperature of 21 degrees in winter, but 20 percent do not. “Our goal is to make everyone feel good, without exception.”
The ability to accurately measure a person’s energy use paves the way for a new breed of technology that feeds the collected data into central heating and cooling systems. These in turn can adjust the temperature in a specific area, such as a desk, in real time, thereby optimizing energy consumption in buildings.
Now the research team is looking for less invasive measurement methods than the silicone face masks and body sensors that the subjects had to wear. It currently works with infrared cameras. Questions of data protection are still to be clarified. Their study was recently published in the Obesity Journal.