Influence of Working from Home Scenarios on Annual Heating Energy Demand for German Residential Buildings

In this paper, sensitivity analysis is performed for 12 building year classes of German residential buildings to investigate the influence and magnitude of working from home (WFH) scenarios on the annual heating energy demand per specific area (AHED). The analysis contains a variation of user behavior (efficient: S1 and inefficient: S2), insulation standard, zone heating set point, living area of the buildings, and WFH share. For this purpose, 264 simulations are performed for a single-family house (SFH) with 8 zones and a multi-family house (MFH) with 5 zones using reduced-order dynamic building simulation models in Modelica. The simulation models based on the AixLib library were automatically created using the TEASER tool and adapted according to the scenarios. The results show that retrofitting of the building, efficient user behavior scenario, variation WFH share from 100% to 0% for inefficient user behavior scenario, and the reduction of the zone temperature by 1 K had reduced the AHED by a maximum of 82%, 43%, 45%, and 15%, respectively, with the results strongly depending on the year of construction. In contrast, the variation of the living area and the variation of the WFH share in terms of efficient occupant behavior had an insignificant effect on the AHED.