Comfort, Energy Efficiency and Adoption of Personal Cooling Systems in Warm Environments: A Field Experimental Study
1
College of Civil Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
2
Key Laboratory of Building Safety and Energy Efficiency, Hunan University, Ministry of Education, Changsha 410082, China
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2017, 14(11), 1408; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14111408
Received: 17 October 2017 / Revised: 11 November 2017 / Accepted: 14 November 2017 / Published: 17 November 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Indoor Environmental Quality)
It is well known that personal cooling improves thermal comfort and save energy. This study aims to: (1) compare different personal cooling systems and (2) understand what influences users’ willingness to adopt them. A series of experiments on several types of personal cooling systems, which included physical measurements, questionnaires and feedback, was conducted in a real office environment. The obtained results showed that personal cooling improved comfort of participants in warm environments. Then an improved index was proposed and used to compare different types of personal cooling systems in terms of comfort and energy efficiency simultaneously. According to the improved index, desk fans were highly energy-efficient, while the hybrid personal cooling (the combination of radiant cooling desk and desk fan) consumed more energy but showed advantages of extending the comfortable temperature range. Moreover, if personal cooling was free, most participants were willing to adopt it and the effectiveness was the main factor influencing their willingness, whereas if participants had to pay, they probably refused to adopt it due to the cost and the availability of conventional air conditioners. Thus, providing effective and free personal cooling systems should be regarded as a better way for its wider application.
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Keywords:
thermal comfort; energy efficiency; radiant cooling desk; desk fan; personal cooling; logistic regression
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MDPI and ACS Style
He, Y.; Li, N.; Wang, X.; He, M.; He, D. Comfort, Energy Efficiency and Adoption of Personal Cooling Systems in Warm Environments: A Field Experimental Study. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2017, 14, 1408.
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