Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972

Optimization of building thermal design and control by

multi-criterion genetic algorithm
Jonathan A. Wright*, Heather A. Loosemore, Raziyeh Farmani
Department of Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, UK

Abstract

The design of buildings is a multi-criterion optimization problem, there always being a trade-off to be made between capital expenditure,
operating cost, and occupant thermal comfort. This paper investigates the application of a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) search
method in the identification of the optimum pay-off characteristic between the energy cost of a building and the the occupant thermal
discomfort. Results are presented for the pay-off characteristics between energy cost and zone thermal comfort, for three design days and three
building weights. Inspection of the solutions indicates that the MOGA is able to find the optimum pay-off characteristic between the daily
energy cost and zone thermal comfort. It can be concluded that multi-criterion genetic algorithm search methods offer great potential for the
identification of the pay-off between the elements of building thermal design, and as such can help inform the building design process.
# 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Building energy optimization; HVAC systems; Supervisory control; Multi-criterion optimization; Genetic algorithms

1. Introduction off between the criteria in advance of the search (for

It is common for buildings to be designed and constructed
to a fixed capital cost. Within this capital expenditure, there
may be some optimization of the design in an attempt to
reduce running costs without prejudicing the thermal com-
fort of the building occupants. This approach however, pays
no attention to the impact that a marginal increase in capital
cost might have on the reduction in running costs or the
improvement in occupant comfort. The coupling between
these design criteria and its impact on the design solutions
can be evaluated through the application of multi-criterion
decision making (MCDM) methods. The MCDM process
has two elements:
(1) the designer must make a decision as to which pay-off
between the criteria results in the most desirable design
solution;
(2) a procedure to search for one or more solutions that
reflect the desired pay-off between the criteria.
The relationship between decision and search has three
forms [1,2].

A priori preference articulation (decide ! search), in
which the decision maker (DM) defines the preferred pay-
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: j.a.wright@lboro.ac.uk (J.A. Wright).
instance, the designer may say that the capital cost of the
building is twice as important as the operating cost).

Progressive preference articulation (decide $ search), in
which the DM and search are intertwined, with the DM
using progressive solutions to inform the decision making
process and the final choice of pay-off.

A posteriori preference articulation (search ! decide), in
which the DM is presented with a set of solutions and then
chooses a final design solution from that set.
The most common a priori approach is one in which the
DM assigns weights to each of criteria, the weighted sum of
the criteria then forming a single design criterion. An
optimization algorithm is then used to find the single design
solution that minimizes the weighted sum of the criteria. For
instance, the capital cost fc ðXÞ, and the operating cost fo ðXÞ,
of a building could be transformed into a single design
objective by assigning a weight (wc and wo ), to each of the
criteria and summing them (Eq. (1)). The sum of the criteria
could then be minimized to produce a single design solution
that provided a weighted pay-off between the capital and
operating costs. The choice of weights may be arbitrary,
although the weights could be defined through the life-cycle
cost of a building since this is in principle a weighted sum of
the capital and operating costs.
f ðXÞ ¼ wo fo ðXÞ þ wc fc ðXÞ (1)

0378-7788/02/$ – see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 7 8 - 7 7 8 8 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 7 1 - 3
960 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972
Fig. 1. Example pay-off characteristic.
Fig. 1 illustrates a possible pay-off between the capital
and operating costs of the building. Suppose that the
designer (DM), decided that minimizing capital cost was
twice as important as minimizing the operating cost. Mini-
mizing a single weighted criteria would result in one design
solution on the pay-off curve. However, this does not provide
the designer with information about how sensitive the
operating cost is to changes in capital cost. For instance,
the designer would not be able to evaluate the potential
reduction in operating cost due to say a 50% increase in the
capital cost.
The progressive preference articulation approach in part
solves this problem, by generating at least one alternative to
the single design solution (for instance, by assigning dif-
ferent weights and repeating the optimization). However,
since the complete pay-off curve is not available, the infor-
mation available to the designer is restricted to the narrow
range of the solutions generated. Further, this approach is
likely to be computationally too intensive for building
thermal design, since each new solution would require a
repeated optimization and simulation of the building thermal
performance. Therefore, in this paper, the a posteriori
preference articulation approach is advocated, in which
the complete pay-off characteristic is determined in one
optimization of the building design (thus minimizing the
need for repeated optimization and associated simulation of
building thermal performance).
1.1. Pareto optimization
An optimum pay-off characteristic may be represented by
the Pareto set of solutions. Each solution in the set is said to
be non-dominated by any other solution. This concept is
illustrated in Fig. 2, which shows a set of seven sample
solutions for two criteria (f1 ðXÞ and f2 ðXÞ). The non-domi-
nated solutions in the set are indicated by a ranking of 0. For
each of the non-dominated solutions, there is no other
solution in the set that has a lower value in any criterion.
The solution ranked 3 however, is ‘‘dominated’’ by three
other solutions in the set; i.e. three other solutions have a
lower value in both criteria.
Fig. 2. Example Pareto ranking.
Pareto multi-criterion optimization has been applied pre-
viously to the design of buildings [3]. The criteria considered
were the thermal load, daylight availability, planning effi-
ciency, and capital cost. The optimization problem was
solved using a dynamic programming optimization algo-
rithm, which although solutions where obtained, did not
provide a sufficient number of solutions to allow the pay-off
between the criteria to be examined. A potential solution to
this deficiency is examined in this paper through the use of a
multi-criterion genetic algorithm optimization method.
Note that the focus of this paper is on the search element
of the MCDM process rather than the decision making
element. The effectiveness of the search method is examined
in relation to the optimum sizing of a heating, ventilating and
air conditioning (HVAC) system, simultaneously with the
optimization of its supervisory control strategy; identifica-
tion of the pay-off between the system energy use and
occupant comfort being the aim of the optimization.
2. Optimization algorithm
The search method advocated for finding the Pareto, non-
dominated, set of solutions is based on a genetic algorithm
(GA). Although several ‘‘traditional’’ multi-criterion opti-
mization methods exist [2], they often require a sequential
and therefore computationally intensive approach to finding
the Pareto set of solutions. Rather than progressively mini-
mizing a single possible solution, GAs operate with a set of
possible solutions (known as the population). This enables
several members (if not all members) of the Pareto optimum
set to be found in a single run of the algorithm [4].
GAs begin with a randomly initialized population of
solutions. The GA then seeks to maximize the fitness of
the population by selecting the ‘‘fittest’’ individuals from the
population and using their ‘‘genetic’’ information in ‘‘mat-
ing’’ and ‘‘mutation’’ operators to create a new population of
solutions. Many variations of the fundamental GA have been
 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972
developed, but the form of GA implemented in this work is
derived from the so called ’’simple genetic algorithm’’ [5]. A
detailed description is beyond the scope of this paper, but the
form of the GA implemented can be summarized as being, a
simple binary encoded GA with ‘‘roulette wheel’’ selection
and a non-overlapping population.
2.1. The multi-criterion genetic algorithm
GAs are unconstrained search methods that were origin-
ally designed to optimize a single criterion as represented
by the fitness of each individual in the population. Many of
the variations to the basic GA are concerned with the des-
cription of the individuals fitness; this is particularly the
case for the multi-criterion optimization. Several app-
roaches to defining the fitness for a multi-criterion genetic
algorithm optimization exist [4]. The approach implemen-
ted here is the multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA)
[6,7]. This algorithm employs the Pareto ranking scheme
illustrated in Fig. 1, the Pareto rank then being used to form
the fitness of each solution (solutions of equal rank having
equal fitness). However, since GAs seek to maximize fitness
and we seek to find the pay-off that minimizes the criteria,
the Pareto rank is inverted to form the fitness of the
individuals. An exponential weighting is also applied dur-
ing the inversion to give extra weight to the non-dominated
(Pareto 0) solutions.
Since many problems are constrained (as is the case in the
thermal design of buildings), the MOGA includes an
approach to handling the constraint functions. In short,
the constraints are treated as criteria and ‘‘goal restraints’’
applied to force the solutions into the desired feasible region
(by penalizing the Pareto rank of the infeasible solutions).
Treating the constraints as criteria has the advantage that the
pay-off between constraint function bounds and the true
design criteria can be examined. However, it has the dis-
advantage that the pay-off characteristic becomes increas-
ingly difficult to interpret as the number of criteria increases
(for instance, the pay-off curve becomes a pay-off surface as
the number of criteria is increased from two to three). For
this reason, a means of aggregating the constraints into a
single criterion has been developed [8]. As well as reducing
the number of criteria, the method also allows the aggregated
constraint ‘‘criterion’’ to be removed from the search once
feasible solutions are obtained, further reducing the dimen-
sionality of the pay-off information.
2.2. The single criterion genetic algorithm
Since in general, no analytical solution exists for building
optimization problems, the extent to which the solutions are
optimal can only be confirmed by inspection of the solu-
tions. Here, this is complemented by comparing a solution
on the Pareto curve obtained from the multi-criterion opti-
mization, with a single solution obtained using a single
criterion genetic algorithm. GAs not only lend themselves
961
to the multi-criterion optimization of buildings but also the
single criterion building optimization [9].
The single criterion genetic algorithm is derived from the
same ‘‘simple genetic algorithm’’ as used for the multi-
criterion genetic algorithm, the difference between the two
relating to the fitness formulation. In particular, the fitness
formulation developed in this work addresses the need to
automatically find an initial feasible solution starting from a
randomly generated initial population. It is beyond the scope
of this paper to describe the method in detail. However, the
algorithm uses a normalized sum of the constraint violations
as a measure of a solutions infeasibility (the normalization
being described in [10]). The solutions infeasibility is used
to rank the solutions in the population, the ranking forming
the fitness of the solution. For instance, if all of the solutions
are infeasible then the ranking is obtained for each indivi-
dual by counting the number of solutions with a higher
(worse) infeasibility. Since the GA seeks to maximise the
fitness of the population, bias is given to the solutions with
the higher rank (lower infeasibility) as the search progresses.
A two part ranking (objective and infeasibility) is applied
once a feasible solution is found.
3. Example problem formulation
The multi-criterion optimization of building thermal sys-
tems is investigated here through the design of a single zone
‘‘all outside air’’ HVAC system. The system consists of a
regenerative heat exchanger, cooling coil, heating coil, and
supply fan (Fig. 3). The control system is open loop to the
zone, since the optimization seeks to determine the supply
air temperature (ys ), and flow rate (Ms ), in each hour such
that the zone conditions remain comfortable. This control
configuration has been selected since it can be applied to
buildings having ventilated floor slabs as well as conven-
tional air conditioned buildings. The controller has two
setpoints, one for the supply air temperature (ysp ) and a
second for the supply air flow rate (Msp ). For a given supply
air setpoint (ysp ), the control supervisor determines if the
heat recovery device should be operational, and whether
active heating or cooling is required in order to meet the
Fig. 3. The example HVAC system.
962 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972

setpoint. The supply air flow rate is controlled through a Table 1

separate fan speed controller. Problem variables
The formulation of an optimization problem for this Variabel type Lower bond Upper bond Discrete
system can be described through the choice of problem increment
variables, the design constraint, and the optimization cri- On/off status 0 1 1
teria. Note that in the multi-criterion optimization used here, Msp (kg/s) 0.18 1.0 0.01
the design constraints are also treated as criteria (by aggre- ysp (
C) 10.0 40.0 0.24
gating them to form a single criterion, [8]). Coil width (m) 0.50 2.50 0.05
Coil height(m) 0.50 2.50 0.05
Rows 1 10 1
3.1. The problem variables Water circuits 2 129 1
Water flow rate (kg/s) 0.0 10.23 0.01
This study is restricted to investigating the pay-off Fan size 0 2 1
between the HVAC system energy cost and occupant ther-
mal comfort. For a given building construction, the energy
cost will be influenced by both the system operation and the The range of each type of problem variable is given in
size of the HVAC system. Therefore, the problem variables Table 1. Fan sizes 0, 1 and 2 correspond to fan diameters of
are formed from the control system setpoints and the size of 0.38, 0.445 and 0.508 m (this non-linear series being repre-
the HVAC components. It is also necessary to evaluate the sented by the evenly incremented integer values).
performance of the HVAC system for at least two design
days if the problem formulation is to reflect the coupling 3.2. The design constraints
between the control strategy and HVAC system size. For
instance, the size of the cooling coil will be dictated by the The design constraints are derived from restrictions on the
peak summer operation, and the heating coil by the peak design of the coils, the performance envelop of the supply
winter operation. In this study, 3 days of operation have been fan, and the need to ensure that the system has sufficient
used to evaluate the performance of a given system design capacity to meet the supply air temperature and flow rate
and control strategy, a winter design day, a day in the setpoints.
‘‘swing’’ season, and a summer design day. The design of the coils are restricted by three constraints
Separate problem variables have been defined for the (giving six constraints for both coils). First, the air face
supply air temperature and flow rate setpoints in each hour velocity is restricted to limit noise, and moisture carry-over
of the day (giving a total of 48 setpoints for each day of in the cooling coil. Second, the water velocity per water
operation). Since it may not be necessary for the system to circuits is limited to prevent excessive pipe erosion. Finally,
operate continuously outside of the occupied period, sepa- the coil water circuits configuration is restricted to ensure
rate system status (on/off) variables have been included for that the flow and return headers are on the same side of the
each hour of the unoccupied period (giving a further 15 coil. This requires that the number of tubes per circuit is an
control variables for each day of operation). Given three even number (Eq. (2)).
design days, and 63 control variables for each day, there are
189 control variables in the problem formulation. Previous modðtubes per circuit; 2Þ ¼ 0 (2)
research indicates that in some instances, the number of Since the fan model is derived from manufacturers product
control variables could be significantly reduced to 15 for data, it is unwise to extrapolate the fan performance beyond
each day of operation [11,12]. This is particularly true for the the limits of this data. Therefore, four constraints have been
slow reacting ‘‘heavy-weight’’ buildings and buildings hav- implemented to ensure that the fan remains within its
ing ventilated floor slabs, but reducing the number of performance envelope. The first two constraints restrict
setpoints may prove less effective for fast reacting ‘‘light- the fan speed while the second two restrict the volume flow
weight’’ buildings. Further, the number of control variables rate through the fan [13].
defined here represents the maximum number likely to be Finally, there is a need to ensure that the HVAC system
required and therefore poses a suitable problem against has sufficient capacity to meet the supply air temperature
which to evaluate the performance of the optimization and flow rate setpoints. This is ensured by two constraints,
algorithm. one on the error in the supply air temperature, and a second
The size of the HVAC system is represented by the width, on the error in the supply air flow rate. Therefore, there is a
height, number of rows, and number of water circuits of each total of 12 constraints on the optimization, six coil design
coil and the supply fan diameter. The maximum water flow constraints, four fan envelope constraints, and two setpoint
rate to each coil is also a problem variable. The size of the constraints.
heat recovery device has been fixed as has the return fan Table 2 indicates that the majority of the constraints are
diameter. This adds a further 11 problem variables, which inequality constraints (gðXÞ  limit or gðXÞ limit),
together with the control variables, gives a total of 200 although there are also three equality constraints (hðXÞ ¼
problem variables. limit). Note that the fan performance envelope constraints
 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972 963

Table 2 The operating cost of the HVAC system is defined here

Constraint functions simply as the sum of the system energy cost over the three
Constraint function Constraint form Constraint limit design days; an approach to estimating the annual energy
cost from a day of operation in each season requires further
Face velocity (m/s)  2.5
Water velocity (m/s)  1.8 research. The hot water supplied to the heating coil is
Water circuits ¼ 0.0 considered to have originated from a gas fired boiler and
Fan speed  1.0 the chilled water from an electric powered chiller, with the
Fan speed 0.0 part load performance being included in the evaluation of
Volume flow  1.0
energy use. A two part electricity tariff has been applied, the
Volume flow 0.0
Temperature setpoint ¼ 0 high tariff occurring from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The gas is
Flow setpoint ¼ 0 charged at a flat rate over the day.
The zone comfort criteria are represented here by the
‘‘predicted percentage of dissatisfied’’ (PPD) [14]. It is not
have been normalized to be in the range 0.0–1.0. Also, satis- necessary to include a comfort criteria for every hour of the
faction of the temperature and flow rate setpoints is indicated day, it is only necessary to specify the maximum PPD
by an equality constraint with a value of 0 (failure being occurring at any time during the day (this representing
indicated by a value of 1). This form of constraint has been the maximum discomfort). Hence, one comfort criteria is
adopted since it is also used to represent instances where the specified for each design day.
HVAC system simulation has failed to converge on a solution.
3.4. Evaluation of the trial solutions
3.3. The optimization criteria
The performance of each candidate design solution is
Three optimization criteria have been specified: evaluated using a thermal performance simulation of the
building and associated HVAC system. A single zone
(1) the operating cost of the HVAC system for the design
lumped capacitance model has been used here to represent
days;
the thermal response of the zone [15]. The model addresses
(2) the maximum thermal discomfort during occupancy on
the thermal storage in a ventilated slab system as well as the
each design day;
building fabric. The model may also be used to simulate the
(3) the infeasibility objective.
performance of a conventional building constructed without
The infeasibility objective is an aggregated value of the ventilated floor and ceiling slabs. The zone has been mod-
constraint violations [8]. The infeasibility objective does not elled as a south facing mid-level zone in a multi-storey
form part of the pay-off analysis, but is included in the Pareto building. The zone has one window in the south facing
ranking as a means of finding and maintaining feasible facade. The zone is subject to a daily profile of adjacent zone
solutions [8]. Further, since feasible solutions have in effect temperatures and ambient conditions (temperature and solar
zero infeasibility, the infeasibility objective is removed from irradiance). Three design days of ambient conditions have
the Pareto ranking for feasible solutions (leaving the ranking been selected from UK weather data, a ‘‘summer’’ day, a
to be based on the two true criteria of operating cost and ‘‘swing’’ season day, and a ‘‘winter day’’ (Fig. 4). A profile
thermal comfort). of internal gains during occupancy has also been defined.

Fig. 4. Boundary conditions

964 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972
The model initialization is ensured by running the model
five times for each day of boundary data; however, only the
results from the last day in the sequence are used in the
optimization. Five consecutive runs of the model has been
found to result in acceptable initialization of the model, even
for a ‘‘heavy-weight’’ building construction.
The zone air temperature and radiant star temperatures
are used in the calculation of the room thermal comfort
(PPD). All other thermal comfort parameters (metabolic
rate, air velocity, and zone vapour pressure), have been
been assigned constant values.
The HVAC system performance has been simulated using
steady state component models. Both the heating and cool-
ing coil models have been based on a transfer unit, capacity
ratio, effectiveness relationship for a counter flow heat
exchanger. The overall conductance for the coils is based
on typical values derived from manufacturer’s performance
data [16]. The latent heat transfer in the cooling coil has not
been modelled. The fan model is a simple polynomial
curvefit of the manufacture’s normalized performance data
[13]. The pressure drop due to the ductwork has been
modelled as a simple quadratic resistance; the quadratic
resistance of the coils is also a function of the number of coil
rows. The heat recovery device has been modelled as having
a fixed temperature effectiveness, regardless of the air flow
rate. Although in some instances, simplified models have
been implemented (such as ignoring latent heat transfer), the
models retains sufficient detail and characteristics to allow
evaluation of the optimization procedure.
4. Results and analysis
The performance of the multi-criterion genetic algorithm
has been investigated here for the solution of two optimiza-
tion problems. In each case, for a given building construc-
tion, the pay-off is sort between the energy cost and occupant
thermal discomfort. However, in the first optimization pro-
blem, only the summer design day of operation is consid-
ered, which reduces the scale of the optimization problem
and consequently makes it easier to solve. In the second
optimization problem, all three design days are included in
the analysis with the pay-off between energy cost and
occupant discomfort being sort for all 3 days.
The building construction is fixed for each optimization
example, (with the problem variables relating only to the
Table 3
Building construction
Fabric element Light-weight
External wall Facing brick air gap, gypsum
sheathing, insulation, wall board
Internal wall Wall board insulation, wall board
Floor and ceiling Floor tile, concrete
control schedule and size of HVAC system). Three weights
of building are used in the example problems, the construc-
tions for which are given in Table 3. The corresponding
material properties for each construction element are given
in [17]. In all the examples, a low emissivity glass with 20%
glazed area has been specified.
4.1. Summer design day optimization
The summer design day optimization study has been
conducted for the medium-weight building only. Fig. 5,
gives the optimum pay-off characteristic between the daily
energy cost and occupant thermal discomfort for a summer
design day. As would be expected, an improvement in
thermal comfort requires an increase in energy use. A
comparison between Figs. 6 and 7 illustrates that the higher
energy cost is driven largely by changes in plant operation
during the afternoon. The solid lines in both the figures
represent the variable bounds in the optimization; the dashed
line for the temperature setpoints is the ambient temperature
at that hour.
Fig. 6 illustrates that the energy cost is practicably unaf-
fected by the system operation at 10:00 a.m., with the
temperature setpoint being equal to the ambient temperature
and the flow rate tending to the minimum allowable flow rate
(0.2 m3 /s). Conversely, the changes to both setpoints at
4:00 p.m. (Fig. 7), are clearly contributing to the increase
in energy cost (the increase in flow rate resulting in more fan
power and the supply air temperature demanding increasing
levels of mechanical cooling). The trend of little change in
setpoints during the morning and increased cooling in the
afternoon is driven by the load characteristic for the building.
In general, the building is comfortable during the morning,
and it is not until the afternoon that the thermal loads increase
to a level where mechanical cooling is necessary to maintain
comfort. Hence, the greatest coupling between the thermal
comfort and the energy use occurs during the late afternoon
when the thermal loads are the highest.
It is informative to investigate the setpoint solutions for
the extreme points on the curve, since these give an insight to
the extremes of system operation and to some extent, the
degree to which the solutions are optimal. Fig. 8 illustrates
the supply air setpoints for the lowest energy cost solution
(and the highest discomfort solution). It would be expected
that the lowest energy cost would result from a setpoint
schedule that demanded no mechanical cooling and flow
Medium-weight Heavy-weight
Facing brick, airgap, insulation, Facing brick, air gap, insulation,
concrete block, plaster solid concrete block, plaster
Plaster, concrete block, plaster Plaster, concrete block, plaster
Floor tile, concrete Floor tile, concrete
 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972 965

Fig. 5. Summer design day energy cost vs. PPD pay-off

rates set to the minimum allowable value. Fig. 8 illustrates
that this is the case for the solution obtained from the
optimization. The corresponding profile of thermal discom-
fort (Fig. 9), throughout the day indicates that the maximum
discomfort during the occupied period (8:00 a.m. and
5:00 p.m.) occur late in the afternoon when the summer
thermal loads are the highest.
The solution for the highest energy cost (and lowest
thermal discomfort) is somewhat harder to predict, although
it would be expected that energy use would increase during
the afternoon as the thermal load increases (hence more
mechanical cooling is required in order to minimize the
thermal discomfort). Fig. 10 indicates that this is the case,
with the increase in thermal load first being offset by an
increase in flow rate. As the load increases further however,
it can only be offset by a lower supply air temperature. This
occurred at 1:00 p.m., the change in temperature setpoint
being so marked that the supply air flow rate was also

Fig. 6. Setpoints vs. energy cost at 10:00 a.m.

966 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972

Fig. 7. Setpoints vs. energy cost at 4:00 p.m.

reduced so as to not over-cool the building. Note also that the
supply air temperature during the early part of occupancy is
above the ambient temperature; this occurs since during
summer operation, the building maybe slightly cool during
the early part of occupancy until the thermal gains increase.
Hence, the supply air temperature setpoint is higher than the
cool morning ambient temperature so as to not over-cool the
building. The corresponding profile of thermal discomfort
during the occupied period (Fig. 11), indicates that the
control schedule is effective in maintaining a near minimum
(5% PPD) discomfort throughout the occupied period,
which is in stark contrast to the lowest energy cost solutions
(Fig. 9).
Inspection of the solutions for the extreme points on the
pay-off curve suggests that they are consistent with the
perceived operation of the HVAC system and are optimal.

Fig. 8. Lowest energy cost setpoints

 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972 967

Fig. 9. PPD for the lowest energy cost solution

The extent to which the pay-off curve is optimal is examined
further by comparing a solution for 10% PPD with that
obtained from the single criterion optimization. The corre-
sponding solution on the pay-off curve was obtained from
the single criterion minimization of the energy cost, with the
maximum thermal discomfort of 10% PPD set as a con-
straint on the optimization.
The energy cost and the thermal discomfort are very close
for the two optimizations. The multi-criterion optimization
resulted in an energy cost of £0.3125 and the single criterion
optimization, £0.3120; clearly an insignificant, if not
unquantifiable difference. The maximum thermal discom-
fort was 9.99% PPD for the multi-criterion optimization and
9.96% for the single criterion optimization.

Fig. 10. Highest energy cost setpoints

968 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972

Fig. 11. PPD for the highest energy cost solution.

Fig. 12, illustrates the supply air setpoints from multi-
criterion optimization closest to 10% PPD. As expected,
the highest demand for mechanical cooling is in the late
afternoon, the temperature setpoints following the ambient
temperature during the early part of occupancy. Fig. 13
illustrates that the corresponding solution obtained from the
single criterion optimization. The main differences between
the two solutions is that the single criterion optimization has
made some use of free cooling during the off-peak period,
whereas the multi-criterion optimization has not. The solu-
tion from the multi-criterion optimization also uses more
energy through a generally higher flow rate setpoint,
although this is compensated for by a slightly higher supply
air temperature setpoint in the late afternoon.
It can be concluded, that for this example, the multi-
criterion optimization is finding a near optimal pay-off

Fig. 12. Setpoints for 10% PPD (MOGA search).

 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972
Fig. 13. Setpoint for 10% PPD (single criterion search).
characteristic between the daily energy cost and zone ther-
mal discomfort. The extreme points on the curve are con-
sistent with the expected behaviour of the system, and
comparison with a solution found from a single criterion
optimization confirmed that the difference in energy cost
was unquantifiable. As to which solution the ‘‘Decision
Maker’’ should choose, it would seem that the solution with
the lowest energy cost is a good solution, considering that
the corresponding thermal discomfort is only 15.0% PPD,
(this not withstanding that the sensitivity of the solution has
not been investigated).
4.2. Simultaneous three design day optimization
In the second optimization problem, the pay-off charac-
teristic between energy cost and discomfort is sort for the
three design days simultaneously. Since the days are apart in
time (and in season), the control strategy for one day does
not influence the energy cost and discomfort on any other
day. The pay-off between energy cost and discomfort for
each design day is however coupled via the size of the HVAC
system. Since the majority of the optimization problem
variables are concerned with the control strategy, the size
of the HVAC system can be considered to have a secondary
effect, particularly as the search approaches the region of the
optimum pay-off. This has led to an enhancement to the
ranking scheme employed in the multi-criterion optimiza-
tion. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss this in
detail, but in short a four part Pareto ranking scheme has
been implemented, three rankings based on the energy cost
and discomfort for each design day, and a fourth ranking that
accounts for the coupling due to the size of the HVAC
system. The separate rankings are used in the algorithms
969
‘‘genetic’’ operators to influence the selection of the solu-
tions used in the production of each new generation.
Fig. 14 illustrates the energy cost discomfort pay-off
curves for each design day. Not surprisingly, the moderate
ambient conditions of the swing season day, result in least
pay-off between energy-cost and discomfort, with the worst
discomfort only being in the order of 8% PPD. Conversely,
the high thermal gains associated with the summer design
day result in the greatest pay-off between energy cost and
occupant discomfort.
The optimality of this set of solutions is confirmed here
by comparing the pay-off curve for the summer design
day with the curve obtained from the single season opti-
mization, (the optimality of the solution from the single
design day optimization having been confirmed by inspec-
tion of the results). Fig. 15 illustrates that the two pay-off
curves are very similar, which suggests that the solutions
obtained for the three design day optimization are near
optimal, (strictly, this would only be confirmed by further
inspection of the results, particularly the control variable
values).
Fig. 16 illustrates the pay-off curves for different building
weights. In this figure, the energy cost and occupant dis-
comfort are given as the sum of the values obtained for the
three design days. Each curve was obtained from a separate
run of the multi-criterion optimization. The pay-off curves
obtained for the medium-weight and heavy-weight buildings
are almost indistinguishable. This might be expected, con-
sidering that the two constructions are very similar (Table 3).
The light-weight building construction is however, very
different from the medium-weight and heavy-weight build-
ings, which has resulted in much larger discomfort for the
the low energy cost solutions.
970 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972

Fig. 14. Three design day energy cost vs. PPD pay-off.

4.3. Performance of the multi-criterion genetic algorithm
The search results indicate that the multi-criterion genetic
algorithm has the potential to find Pareto optimal solutions for
building design problems. It is however, prudent to examine
the computational effectiveness of the algorithm in finding
these solutions. In order to determine the pay-off character-
istic between the energy cost and zone thermal discomfort, the
multi-criterion genetic algorithm was run with a population of
200 sample solutions, and was allowed to run for a 1000
generations. It is common to allow a GA based search to run
for a fixed number of generations since defining stopping
rules for these stochastic optimizers is difficult. The fixed
number of generations could result in a total of 200,000 trial
solutions. However, it is likely that the number of trial
solutions required to find the Pareto optimum set was much

Fig. 15. Comparison of summer design day results.

 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972 971

Fig. 16. Energy cost vs. PPD pay-off for different Building Weights.

less, since GA based optimizers exhibit an exponential con-
vergence towards the solution. This is illustrated in Fig. 17, in
which starting from an initial randomly generated population
of solutions, the search converged to the region of the
optimum within 20 generations. It should also be noted that
all solutions in the initial population were infeasible, but that
feasible solutions were found within four generations.
The power of the multi-criterion genetic algorithm is also
apparent from the number of solutions obtained along the
pay-off curve. For the medium-weight building, the multi-
criterion genetic algorithm found 120 solutions along the
pay-off curve. The maximum number of trial solutions was
200,000, whereas the single criterion genetic algorithm
provided a single optimum solution (for 10% PPD), in
maximum of 80,000 trial solutions (a population of 80
individuals with a maximum of 1000 generations). Hence,
119 more solutions were obtained for 2.5 times the number
of trial solutions.

Fig. 17. ‘‘Convergence’’ of the MOGA search.

972 J.A. Wright et al. / Energy and Buildings 34 (2002) 959–972
5. Conclusions
The design of buildings is a multi-criterion optimization
problem, there always being a trade-off to be made between
capital expenditure, operating cost, and occupant thermal
comfort. Such a design process can be informed by the
application of MCDM techniques. The MCDM process has
two elements, the search for viable solutions, and the
decision as to which solution is the most desirable.
This paper investigates that application of a multi-criter-
ion genetic algorithm in the search for a non-dominated
(Pareto) set of solutions to pay-off between energy cost and
occupant discomfort. Inspection of the results indicates that
the multi-criterion genetic algorithm is able to identify the
pay-off characteristic between daily energy cost and zone
thermal discomfort. The multi-criterion genetic algorithm
exhibits fast progress towards the Pareto optimal solutions,
and in particular is able to find feasible solutions within a
very few trail solutions.
It can be concluded that multi-criterion genetic algorithm
based optimizers show great potential for the solution of
multi-criterion building optimization problems, and may be
used in the design process to enhance the understanding of
the characteristic behaviour of the building and design
solutions.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the UK Engineering and Phy-
sical Science Research Council for funding this work. The
authors would also like to acknowledge Professor Peter
Fleming and Dr. Andrew Chipperfield of the University
of Sheffield for the advice they have given on multi-objec-
tive genetic algorithm optimization.
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