Optimization of energy use and academic performance for educational environments in hot-humid climates

Abstract

Thermal comfort and air quality are important factors for indoor environment in school buildings owing to the strong relationship with students’ academic performance. However, the expense of achieving expected environment quality in classrooms is unaffordable by many schools; thus, this study aims to suggest optimal strategies for balancing energy use and indoor environment quality simultaneously. Through the field measurement and building energy simulation, we analyzed the influences of temperature set-point and ventilation rate on environment quality and clarified the optimal trade-off measures for Taiwanese primary school. The optimal combination of set-point and ventilation rate considered academic performance and cooling energy based on single-objective optimization is proposed and revealed the highest hourly average cost performance is 2.13%/kWh each hour in Taipei and 2.03%/kWh each hour in Kaohsiung, which respectively corresponding to the set-point and ventilation rate of 24 °C and 26 °C, 12.6 L/s-person and 22.05 L/s-person. Moreover, the optimal combinations concerning financial constraints are also confirmed by Pareto front through multi-objective optimization. The results indicated that to achieve the academic performance higher than 85% in primary school, the optimal solution sets are scattered between the set-point of 23 °C–25 °C and the ventilation rate of 20 L/s-persoñ25.2 L/s-person. Consequently, this study provides recommendations for policymakers to formulate strategies to maximize the academic performance in hot-humid climate zone.