Automated Thermal Zoning and Multi-Objective Optimization of Embodied and Operational Energy and Carbon Emissions of Buildings
Publication: ASCE Inspire 2023
ABSTRACT
A large portion of global energy consumption and carbon emissions stems from the building operation and initial construction. Due to the operational-embodied energy and carbon emissions-energy trade-offs, and limited comprehensive software, developing an energy-efficient and environment-friendly building design necessitates a thorough yet automated and integrated framework. This study proposes a multi-phase and multi-objective genetic-based framework. The framework involves an add-in tool that automatically creates the multi-zone energy model of the building and then couples EnergyPlus to the embodied energy and carbon databases through a Python script to optimize the building in terms of energy and carbon emissions. The proposed framework is applied to a medium office building that is optimized in two phases under the College Station weather conditions. In the first phase of optimization, the operational and embodied energy is reduced by 33.26% and 50.93% from the baseline model, respectively. The second phase optimization decreased operational energy, embodied energy, operational carbon, and embodied carbon by 31.54%, 52.5%, 32.89%, and 51% from the baseline, respectively.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
ASCE Inspire 2023
Pages: 856 - 866
History
Published online: Nov 14, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Air pollution
- Building design
- Buildings
- Carbon fibers
- Design (by type)
- Ecosystems
- Emissions
- Energy consumption
- Energy engineering
- Energy sources (by type)
- Engineering fundamentals
- Engineering materials (by type)
- Environmental engineering
- Fibers
- Materials engineering
- Models (by type)
- Optimization models
- Pollution
- Renewable energy
- Structural engineering
- Structures (by type)
- Thermal power
- Zoning
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