Toward a Human-Centric Demand Response Framework: Optimizing Energy Efficiency and Comfort for Aging People in the Built Environment

This paper presents an innovative strategy to improve the comfort of elderly people during demand response events. Despite the residential sector accounts around 30% of total energy consumption, demand response strategies prioritize system flexibility over occupant well-being, often overlooking comfort when optimizing energy consumption. One issue that is not take into account is the well-being of elderly, who may be particularly affected by such approaches. To address this issue, a Human-Centric Demand Response Framework that prioritizes the comfort of elderly people has been developed. A detailed analysis of each component of the framework is showcased, describing its role and highlighting the input and output data. Finally, a case study is presented to illustrate how the proposed framework is going to be implemented in a real-case scenario during demand response events, highlighting the importance of a Human-Centric approach to assess the comfort of elderly people. As demonstrated in this study, standard methods for evaluating thermal comfort in elderly are no longer accurate.