Personalized Environmental Control System (PECS) with the functions of heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting and acoustic has advantages of controlling the localized environment at occupant’s workstation by their preference instead of conditioning an entire room. This improves personal comfort, health and energy efficiency of the entire heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system substantially. Personalized ventilation will also protect against cross contaminations, which are critical in open-plan offices and work places with close distance. There will in the future be an increasing interest and market for PECS as buildings will need to be pandemic-proofed. The application is for work places with mainly sedentary activity such as offices (such as open-plan, banks, control centers). Due to the pandemic, where many people worked at home, there will be an increase in home working places where PECS may be a solution.

A new IEA EBC Annex (Annex 87 – Energy and Indoor Environmental Quality Performance of Personalised Environmental Control Systems) has recently started and has the overall objective to establish design criteria and operation guidelines for PECS and to quantify the benefits regarding health, comfort, energy, and cost performance. This includes also control concepts and guidelines for operating PECS in spaces with general ambient systems for heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting. The scope includes all types of PECS for local heating, cooling, ventilation, air cleaning, lighting and acoustic. It includes desktop systems, which are mounted on desks or integrated in furniture or chairs with heating/cooling and ventilation functions. It also includes wearables, where heating/cooling and ventilation are included in garments or devices attached to occupants’ body.

The session will introduce the new Annex and discuss several aspects related to the new Annex to gather input from the conference audience.