Energy Conservation Using Cost Minimization for Household Space Heating

Abstract

Building insulation is considered as a solution to reduce the energy cost for both residential and commercial buildings. However, determining the best combination of insulation materials that result into the lowest total ownership cost is now becoming a bigger challenge. Various factors influence the efficiency of heat transfer within a room including geometry and size of the room, ambient temperature, heat and sink sources presented inside the building, type of insulation materials, etc. The aim of this paper is to develop an optimization-based decision making tool to help house owners select the best combination of given insulation materials considering all these factors. The purpose of design approach adopted in this paper is to minimize total ownership cost while providing the required heating in the building. The SQP, Quasi-Newton, line-search algorithm was used to obtain the optimized thermal conductivity values for the combination of insulation material to be used in the walls, floor, ceiling, window and the door of a room, along with the width of the air gap to be kept. The results help in deciding what combination of insulation material will achieve the required heating for the house owner while keep the total cost incurred to be minimum.