The energy performance of a residential building is highly dependent on the occupant's presence or non-presence in a building and their interactions with energy-consuming appliances. Typical occupancy schedules for residential buildings must be defined for applications such as building energy modeling as well as for assessing energy savings associated with the use of occupancy sensing technologies and occupancy-dependent controls. Currently, commonly used simulation programs assume a typical occupancy schedule, however, there is significant opportunity for improvement to these schedules as this is generally based on engineering judgement. This research uses multiple years of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data to develop typical occupancy schedules for a range of household types and based on different occupant characteristics and compared to currently utilized residential occupancy schedules. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the occupancy schedules is also analyzed in this study. The results of this research work towards improved occupancy schedule development can benefit both industry professionals and researchers.
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