Optimizing the Building Refurbishment Process Using Improved Evolutionary Algorithms

Abstract

An optimization model that may be applied to analyze building retrofit strategies is presented in this research. The aim of this research paper is to identify the optimal thermal envelope configuration that will assure the minimum energy requirement for heating in the case of a residential building, while also considering price restrictions obtained through a specific market survey. To achieve this, several values for the following parameters are considered: thermal insulation materials’ conductivities and thicknesses, windows’ overall heat transfer coefficients and total solar energy transmittance and doors’ thermal proprieties. Additionally, this paper presents a method used to find the best option from among the available heat pumps that could cover most of the energy requirements for heating and domestic hot water systems, also considering the products’ prices. The proposed method is based on a Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) model developed in the Pymoo (Multi-Objective Optimization in Python) library. The result shows that the energy requirement for heating can be reduced by up to approximately 75% compared to that obtained in the case of a non-insulated building by using suitable insulation materials and doors and windows with superior thermal proprieties chosen by the NSGA-II.