Heating energy consumption of a passive house in a severe cold region based on human behavior

Human behavior is one of the reasons for the discrepancy between the actual operational and designed energy consumption of a building. A passive ultra-low-energy residential building in Harbin was used as a case study to explore the relationship between indoor heating temperature settings, window-opening behavior of occupants, and building energy consumption. The field test results revealed that the indoor temperature of the passive house exceeded the upper limit of the winter comfortable indoor temperature range 78.7% of the time during the test period. Window-opening rates for winter are low but vary significantly with time, with the average value on weekends being 2.5 times higher than that on weekdays. The simulation results showed that the high heating temperature and window-opening behavior of occupants mainly contributed to the heating energy consumption exceeding the design standard in the actual operation of this passive house. For every 1 °C increase in indoor heating temperature, heating energy consumption increased by 5.2%. Heating energy consumption increased by 5.6% for every additional 5 min of window opening. The results highlight the influence of occupant adaptive behavior on building energy consumption, which could guide occupants to use energy reasonably.