Sustainable Design of Residential Net-Zero Energy Buildings: A Multi-Phase and Multi-Objective Optimization Approach

Abstract

Zero energy building (ZEB) is an important concept for sustainable building design. This paper introduces a holistic design approach for residential net-zero energy buildings (NZEB) by adopting the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) principles: social, environmental, and financial. The proposed approach optimizes social need by maximizing thermal comfort time of natural cooling, and visual comfort time of daylighting. The environmental need is addressed by optimizing energy efficiency, and the financial need is addressed by optimizing life cycle cost (LCC). Multi-objective optimizations are conducted in two phases: the first phase optimizes the utilization rate of natural cooling and daylighting, and the second phase optimizes energy efficiency and LCC. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify the most influential variables in the optimization process. The approach is applied to the design of a landed house in a tropical country, Singapore. The results provide a framework and modeled cases for parametric design and trade-off analysis toward sustainable and livable built environment.

Exploring Simulation Workflows, Tools, and Metrics for Beyond-Vision Effects in Multi-Objective Optimization: A Scoping Review

“…Three papers investigated one aspect (visual performance) in combination with several design variables on adaptive facade design [41], kinetic façade [42] and (energy consumption) for blind position control [25], seven papers investigated a combination of two aspects [8,24,28,[38][39][40]43], eight papers investigated a combination of three metrics [27,[29][30][31][32][35][36][37], three papers investigated a combination of four aspects [26,33,34], and zero investigated 5 or 6 aspects. The most common aspects combinations are (visual comfort, visual performance, and energy consumption) [29,30,32,35], (visual performance, thermal comfort, and energy consumption) [27,31,36,37].…”

“…Most investigated design variables and simulated light sources are related to daylight penetration in buildings. Only four studies investigated both daylight and electric light [32,33,36,38] and only one focussed on electric light sources [26]. Simulations were often done at room level and in office or commercial building types.…”

“…Depending on the case study, the different aspects were not always conflicting with each other. For example, Lan et al [33] investigated four aspects (visual performance, thermal comfort, energy consumption, and life-cycle cost) in net-zero energy buildings (NZEB) and found that the social aims do not conflict with the environmental and economical aims. The results show that designing for daylighting and natural cooling contributes to the improvement of energy efficiency and cost effectiveness as well as better visual performance and thermal comfort.…”

“…Problem formulation includes defining the objective function (e.g., reduce total energy consumption, discomfort glare and thermal discomfort rate), defining the design variable(s), and defining the algorithm parameters or constraints (e.g., illuminance value > 300 lx for visual performance). Design variables can be active variables relying on the use of mechanical and electrical systems, or passive variables relying on natural phenomena to regulate the indoor environmental quality [33].…”

“…In the next step, building performance tools are coupled with optimisation tools to enable applying metaheuristic algorithms. For example, Lan et al [33], coupled JEPlus+EA, a multi-objective optimisation tool based on NSGA-II, with EnergyPlus to explore optimised solutions and to seek insights into the design parametric space that leads to zero energy systems. Another example where no parametric modelling was applied was done by Rabani et al [27].…”