Simulation Driven Rating of Smart Thermostats

Smart thermostats are a low-complexity and widely available technology for reducing HVAC energy use in homes. But how well do they actually work? Most existing methods of evaluating smart thermostats rely on data collected from installations. This requirement makes it difficult to evaluate thermostats that have limited installations or even no installations. For instance, the EPA requires 12 months of data from 1,250 qualifying installations before granting the ENERGY STAR label. Data-driven methods are also unable to directly compare multiple thermostats in controlled experiments because setpoint time series cannot be collected for multiple thermostats operating in the same home during the same period.Recent advances in energy simulation can be used to overcome these shortcomings. In this work, we leverage these advances to create a simulation-driven smart-thermostat evaluation framework and use it to evaluate simple thermostats as well as a generic smart thermostat algorithm for 52 representative homes with various types of HVAC equipment, extending previous results in this area.