Heuristic vs. Meta-Heuristic Optimal Energy Design for an Office Building

Won-Jun Suh and Cheol-Soo Park
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Won-Jun Suh: School of Civil, Architectural Engineering and Landscape Architecture, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Gyeonggi 440-746, Korea
Cheol-Soo Park: School of Civil, Architectural Engineering and Landscape Architecture, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Gyeonggi 440-746, Korea

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: In this paper, an application of heuristic vs. meta-heuristic approaches to the design of an office building is presented. The building was first optimized by a heuristic approach based on the designers’ expertise, prior experiences and intuitions with the use of a whole building simulation tool, EnergyPlus. Then, a meta-heuristic approach was completed in MATLAB platform where EnergyPlus and Genetic Algorithm (GA) were coupled. M-script files were developed to automate execution of EnergyPlus simulation runs (reading output files and overwriting input files of EnergyPlus) in integration to GA. Based on a comparison between the heuristic and the meta-heuristic approach, it is shown that GA performs much better in finding a global optimum even under a constrained search space than the heuristic approach. The heuristic approach has advantages, such as reflection of a design context in decision-making and fast communication between stakeholders.

Keywords: heuristics; meta-heuristics; energyplus; genetic algorithm; building energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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