Building energy simulation and optimization: A case study of industrial halls with varying process loads and occupancy patterns

Industrial halls are mainly low-rise rectangular-shaped structures of simple construction. The relatively loose requirements in space conditioning and the comparatively high internal heat gain make the approach in industrial hall design quite different from that of office building design. The simplicity in building geometry and construction method allows the investigation of energy consumption for building services to be limited to a few demand-side parameters, namely, resistance of the roof and wall insulation, airtightness, and amount of daylighting. This paper investigates the impact of varying these demand-side parameters on the energy consumption for space conditioning and lighting for a typical industrial hall. Through building energy simulation, such impacts can be investigated, and by applying optimization, the configurations of the most optimal combinations of demand-side parameters with the lowest energy consumption can be identified. The result suggests that there is a significant energy-saving potential. For industrial halls, energy consumption for building services can be very sensitive to changes in the process load and occupancy pattern, which in reality, fluctuate widely due to economic cycles, and other factors. Optimized design solutions for industrial halls intended for a particular process load and occupancy pattern might not perform as predicted due to potential changes. To account for potential changes, uncertainty analysis can be performed to determine if the optimized design solutions are in fact robust enough to such changes and to identify solutions that are less susceptible to uncertainty.