Third year project report Optimization of energy consumption of a building using a Genetic Algorithm

This report deals with the problem of optimizing the energy consumption of a building by changing the design of the building. For the optimization a Genetic Algorithm (GA) used. A short introduction to the concept of the GA and a small application on a 2dimensional Ising model is made. The GA has to find the ground state energy of the Ising model with lattice sizes from 2-6. Then the concept of energy models for buildings is introduced and a program which uses a lumped sum model is described. To this program the GA is linked to optimize the design with respect to the energy consumption. 1 General outline of the project In recent years society is getting aware of the greenhouse effect, the hole in the ozone layer or other influences on the nature caused by mankind. Research has shown that the main causes for these effects are traced back to the energy consumption of humans, e. g. cars, industry buildings, etc. . Knowing this, there is a growing demand for building designs which have ..