Life-Cycle Cost Optimization of Residential Building Designs

This paper describes a numerical whole-building optimization method that has been developed to optimize selected residential building envelope and equipment efficiency parameters, using life-cycle cost (LCC) as the optimization criterion. Details of the method are discussed, including the exploitation of special characteristics of the objective function, and its numerical implementation. The method is demonstrated by calculating optimal configurations for a typical single-family residence for a range of U.S. climates. Several potential applications are discussed, focusing on the development of energy standards, and energy performance guidance for design tools.