Tool for Generating Realistic Residential Hot Water Event Schedules: Preprint

The installed energy savings for advanced residential hot water systems can depend greatly on detailed occupant use patterns. Quantifying these patterns is essential for analyzing measures such as tankless water heaters, solar hot water systems with demand-side heat exchangers, distribution system improvements, and recirculation loops. This paper describes the development of an advancedspreadsheet tool that can generate a series of year-long hot water event schedules consistent with realistic probability distributions of start time, duration and flow rate variability, clustering, fixture assignment, vacation periods, and seasonality. This paper also presents the application of the hot water event schedules in the context of an integral-collector-storage solar water heatingsystem in a moderate climate.