Victoria Aragon

University of Southampton

Smart heating controls are being introduced in the domestic sector with the aim of reducing heating demand in buildings. However, the impact of controls on heat demand is not fully understood. This study set out to add empirical evidence to Kempton’s theory on mental models of home heat controls. With this purpose, radiator setpoint records from sm...

Prediction of heat demand is of distinct importance for policy planning in social housing, where residents are in higher danger of falling into fuel poverty. Understanding the behavioural response of fuel vulnerable households against weather allows generating accurate baseline energy models and estimations of energy savings. This paper evaluates w...

This document provides a summary of the Showcasing Engineering for Development event held at the Royal Academy of Engineering on March 18th, detailing all the presentations and panels

In a UK context, encouraging the uptake of energy efficiency measures at the household level is an ongoing challenge of ever-increasing importance. A combination of economic and psychological factors influence green investment decisions and so this study aims to determine whether online focus groups are a viable means of interacting and evaluating...

This document provides the summaries of the presentations given at the 6th Africa Mini Grid Summit held virtually from the 25th—26th February 2021 by the Energy & Climate Change Division and Sustainable Energy Research Group (SERG) as part of the Fortis Unum project. The content of the summaries provide a snapshot of the papers which are being prod...

The efficiency of residential heat supply systems is compromised when the heat load varies. Heat load variability is mainly rooted in space heating demand variations. Heating demand is expected to fluctuate the most during mid-season, as this is when users thermally adapt to warmer or colder weather, resulting in what is known as the “thermal adapt...

Available online xxxx JEL classification: Q2 Q4 Q29 Q41 This paper investigates the effects of behavioural interventions on energy conservation in naturally ventilated offices. Our aim is to inform building managers, environmental consultants, and social scientists on the effectiveness of low-cost, easy-to-implement interventions aimed at reducing...

This report presents the main findings of the activity 4.4 “Reference procedures for obtaining occupancy profiles in residential building” belonging to IEA EBC Annex 66 Subtask A. The activity was conducted with the aim of providing methods to describe occupancy in residential buildings and technical approaches to define occupancy profiles for ener...

The UK aims to reduce its carbon emissions focusing on the renovation of its existing building stock, particularly on the residential sector. Within this group, social housing is an excellent candidate for retrofits, but faces specific challenges. The cases presented in this study are social housing tower blocks in the City of Portsmouth, which are...

Occupancy patterns are necessary to estimate energy demand and evaluate thermal comfort in households. Because of this, many European countries are developing representative domestic schedules to replace outdated criteria. This paper evaluates the state of knowledge of UK domestic occupancy patterns and develops new domestic occupancy profiles for...

Reducing energy demand in dwellings is an important component of meeting carbon reduction targets. The drivers of this demand are linked to occupant practices, varying greatly between people and locations. Heating, as the main component of energy demand in dwellings in the UK, is often associated with thermal comfort, defined in ASHRAE 55 as the 'c...

This work explores the hypothesis that exposure to high indoor temperatures during winter can change thermal expectations of the occupants, challenging the standard boundaries of thermal comfort and leading to excess in energy demand for heating. The analysis presented here is based on two case study social housing tower buildings where indoor temp...

Understanding the occupancy and heating patterns of UK domestic consumers is important for understanding the role of demand-side technologies, such as occupancy-based smart heating controls to manage energy consumption more efficiently. The research undertakes a systematic scoping review to identify and assess the quality of the UK and internation...