Graduate Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, No.1, Sec. 3, Zhongxiao E. Rd., Taipei City, 106, Taiwan.
Sensors (Basel). 2011;11(2):2013-34. doi: 10.3390/s110202013. Epub 2011 Feb 10.
Wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has been successfully applied to energy saving applications in many places, and plays a significant role in achieving power conservation. However, previous studies do not discuss WSN costs and cost-recovery. The application of WSNs is currently limited to research and laboratory experiments, and not mass industrial production, largely because business owners are unfamiliar with the possible favorable return and cost-recovery on WSN investments. Therefore, this paper focuses on the cost-recovery of WSNs and how to reduce air conditioning energy consumption in convenience stores. The WSN used in this study provides feedback to the gateway and adopts the predicted mean vote (PMV) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods to allow customers to shop in a comfortable yet energy-saving environment. Four convenience stores in Taipei have used the proposed WSN since 2008. In 2008, the experiment was initially designed to optimize air-conditioning for energy saving, but additions to the set-up continued beyond 2008, adding the thermal comfort and crowds peak, off-peak features in 2009 to achieve human-friendly energy savings. Comparison with 2007 data, under the same comfort conditions, shows that the power savings increased by 40% (2008) and 53% (2009), respectively. The cost of the WSN equipment was 500 US dollars. Experimental results, including three years of analysis and calculations, show that the marginal energy conservation benefit of the four convenience stores achieved energy savings of up to 53%, recovering all costs in approximately 5 months. The convenience store group participating in this study was satisfied with the efficiency of energy conservation because of the short cost-recovery period.
无线传感器网络 (WSN) 技术已成功应用于许多领域的节能应用，并在实现节能方面发挥了重要作用。然而，以前的研究并未讨论 WSN 的成本和成本回收。WSN 的应用目前仅限于研究和实验室实验，而不是大规模工业生产，主要是因为企业主不熟悉 WSN 投资的可能有利回报和成本回收。因此，本文专注于 WSN 的成本回收以及如何降低便利店的空调能耗。本研究中使用的 WSN 向网关提供反馈，并采用预测平均投票 (PMV) 和计算流体动力学 (CFD) 方法，使客户在舒适且节能的环境中购物。自 2008 年以来，台北的四家便利店已经使用了提出的 WSN。2008 年，该实验最初旨在优化空调以节省能源，但在 2008 年之后，继续增加设置，在 2009 年增加了热舒适和人群高峰、非高峰功能，以实现人性化的节能。与 2007 年的数据相比，在相同的舒适条件下，2008 年和 2009 年的电力节省分别增加了 40%和 53%。WSN 设备的成本为 500 美元。实验结果，包括三年的分析和计算，表明四家便利店的边际节能效益实现了高达 53%的节能，大约在 5 个月内收回了所有成本。参与这项研究的便利店集团对节能效率感到满意，因为成本回收期较短。
