The optimization of energy efficiency measures for a single-family residential building using detailed simulations

One of the biggest problems in the modern world is the exhaustion of non-renewable energy recources, considering that the demand for energy is becoming bigger with time. Since public and residential buildings represent a big part of the global consumption of the final energy, among the primary goals in the process of the development of the energetic and socio-economic sustainability, the improvement of their energetic performance is emphasised. This paper analyzes the potential of improving the energy efficiency of an existing residential building through the process of optimization of the proposed energy retrofit measures of its thermal envelope. The optimization was carried out with the exhaustive search method, while modeling and detailed simulations were chosen for the assessment of the energy properties of the object. Required final energy for heating and cooling of the facility for each hour was obtained with the EnergyPlus simulation tool. Primary energy and global cost are calculated using the appropriate standards. The main goal of the optimization is to precisely allocate project solutions that simultaneously achieve positive effects both in terms of energy and finances. This paper presents the successful optimization of combinations of proposed measures whose implementation can improve the energy properties of the building, while achieving great savings in terms of total annual energy consumption for heating and cooling. Pareto optimal solutions show that the global cost might be reduced for 7 % simultaneously decreasing primary energy for 23 %. In addition, primary energy can be reduced for more than 55 %, but at the expense of the increased global cost.