State of the art review on the HVAC occupant-centric control in different commercial buildings

Heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems control that takes occupant information into account is called HVAC occupant-centric control (OCC), which achieves a better balance between occupants’ thermal comfort and energy saving goals than traditional control based on predefined schedule or manual control. HVAC OCC offers great potential application benefits in commercial buildings, and different types of commercial buildings have different occupancy patterns, which require different OCC strategies. To clarify the differences between HVAC OCC in different types of commercial buildings, this paper divided 23 types of commercial buildings in 209 studies into 4 categories (i.e., single-person space, medium-size space with occupancy schedule, medium-size space without occupancy schedule, large space) according to the number and predictability of occupants. Then, the application details of three core elements (i.e., sensing system, modeling system, controlling system) of HVAC OCC in different categories of commercial building were reviewed. Existing research challenges and future perspectives for future research were discussed, including picking the sensing system with appropriate resolution reducing privacy concerns, advocating for open-source training datasets for modeling system, and enriching the performance indicators of the controlling system. This study not only clarifies the application status of HVAC OCC in different commercial buildings, but also points out the direction for future research. [Display omitted] •Review of HVAC occupant-centric control (OCC) in commercial buildings till date.•Commercial buildings are divided into 4 categories by the features of occupants.•Three core elements of HVAC OCC are compared in different commercial buildings.•The future research directions are proposed to fill up for the current research gaps.