OPTIMAL DESIGN METHOD FOR BUILDINGS & URBAN ENERGY SYSTEMS USING GENETIC ALGORITHMS

In this paper, a new optimal design method for buildings and urban energy systems is proposed. Alsoits applicability is analyzed through a simple case study. Genetic Algorithms (GA) which can deal withnonlinear optimization problems is adopted for this optimal design method. This method has twooptimization steps, selection of equipment capacity and selection of the best operational planning.These optimization problems cannot be solved separately due to the strong relation between thecapacity size and operation efficiency of equipment. Because of this, proposed method calculatesthese two optimization steps simultaneously. The results showed that the proposed method has thepotential to be applied to very complex energy systems and achieve significant improvements.