Improving the Energy Performance and Economic Benefits of Aged Residential Buildings by Retrofitting in Hot–Humid Regions of China

Abstract

The existing building stock faces the challenge of low energy efficiency and requires renovation and upgrading to meet society′s goals of carbon reduction and sustainable development. This study presents an optimization framework utilizing genetic algorithms to develop robust retrofit plans that balance the need for improved energy efficiency, cost-effectiveness considerations for householders, and uncertainties regarding climate conditions. A case study of an aged residential building in a hot and humid region of China is used to demonstrate the proposed method. The optimization results show a potential energy demand reduction of 81.5%. However, due to the relatively long time required to realize economic benefits from high investments, short-term optimization tends to favor solutions with high energy demand and low primary costs. To effectively reduce carbon emissions, it is recommended to consider the long-term economic benefits of retrofits and prioritize solutions with high energy efficiency. However, it is important to acknowledge that the expensive nature of retrofit investments may pose barriers to residents. Society should provide adequate support and guidance to facilitate residential renovation efforts.

Sustainable-Driven Renovation of Existing Residential Buildings in China: A Systematic Exploration Based on Review and Solution Approaches

“…They employ simplified room/zone thermal mass balance models and use accurate yet complex system models to depict the rapid dynamic response of each component under various control strategies. Another group, including EnergyPlus [25,28,31,35,36,44,64,67,68,70,72,76,[83][84][85][86], DeST [73,77], WUFI ® Plus [30], and IDA-ICE [74], focuses primarily on the long-term dynamic thermal performance of buildings and systems. Therefore, they utilize comprehensive room/zone models and simplified system models, making them more suitable for simulating the annual energy consumption of buildings.…”

“…Design-Builder is widely recognized as the most popular simulation software [23,26,28,31,32,42,44,45,53,65,68,76,83,88]. Additionally, Autodesk REVIT [42,87,[89][90][91] and SketchUp [67,72,86], as Building Information Modeling (BIM) software, are also commonly used. These programs support users in constructing building models more straightforwardly and then converting them into dedicated models for respective simulation kernels for conducting building performance simulation and result analysis.…”

“…Despite these advancements, a significant challenge in the renovation process of existing Chinese residential buildings still needs to be determined as the most cost-effective technological path for a specific project [99]. Hence, LCA is often employed to assess life cycle costs (LCC) [26,75,79,86], defined as the sum of all expenses related to energy transmission systems throughout the building's lifecycle, including energy use and renovation costs [100]. Additionally, LCC analysis can be combined with payback period analysis to determine the balance between the cost of renovation measures and energy savings [32].…”

“…Subsequently, the distance between each non-dominated solution and the ideal and anti-ideal solutions is calculated separately. The comprehensive distance serves as the basis for assessing solution equality and enables the computation of TOPSIS scores [49,64,76,86,91].…”

“…Like TOPSIS, VIKOR also requires initial positive processing and normalization. However, the VIKOR method evaluates the merits of solutions by maximizing group utility and minimizing individual regret, ultimately selecting the optimal solution [86].…”