Reliability-based optimization for energy refurbishment of a social housing building

This paper investigates the influence of a stochastic variation of economic parameters in an optimization loop applied to a refurbished social housing building. Usually energy and economic optimization procedures rely on the results of an underlying numerical deterministic model which influences both energy gains and economic figures. However the results are influenced by parameters, which cannot be known in advance especially if they can change during a long period, such as fuels cost and economic indexes. To overcome the problem in this paper a robust approach for building refurbishment optimization has been adopted. Robust optimization considers a stochastic variation of parameters looking for solutions that are not only optimal but also robust, that is the optimal solutions maintain the optimality also for a range of the input parameters. The considered building represents a social house, and the energy reduction measures involve the application of internal insulation layers to the walls and the replacement of existing windows with more efficient ones.