Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Thermal Science and Engineering Progress, cilt.68, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
The rural areas in southern China have a large population and high building intensity, so the energy consumption characteristics of rural residential areas need to be identified to find an optimization strategy to reduce building energy consumption. In this paper, a representative rural area was selected for field study and on-site measurements to analyze the energy use characteristics and identify flexible loads. The questionnaire and on-site measurements found that air conditioners, washing machines, and scooters were the main electricity-consuming devices. The air conditioner operation was the most frequent, with significant fluctuations in summer. The electricity consumption of air conditioners and washing machines was bimodal, while scooters only had a single peak. Therefore, air conditioners were the main schedulable load in rural households. Then, the rural indoor thermal comfort was evaluated to assess its flexible adjustment potential and develop energy-saving strategies through EnergyPlus software. Under temperature setpoint control strategies, setting the thermostat to 24 °C achieved a cumulative energy saving of 14.81 % without impacting thermal comfort. Increasing the temperature by 1 °C during peak hours could further reduce energy consumption by 14.73 %. In contrast, on–off control strategies yielded a maximum energy saving of 4.27 % with the shutdown time of 20:00 in the living room. This study offers a theoretical foundation and technical guidance for implementing energy-saving strategies in rural areas.