It is generally not possible to fully assess the cost-benefit of all viable design options available to you using normal "traditional" iterative and parametric modelling techniques. So you have to simplify things and get the design "about right" to meet your budget and timescale, potentially leaving money on the table for you and your clients and increasing your design risk.
If you are interested in finding out how your business can do better than "about right", our free webinar tomorrow with Brendan Hall of CHA Consulting will review a recent case study project to optimise a HVAC design. Brendan used DesignBuilder's optimisation tools to automate the process and give him the time and capacity to assess all the viable options to find the optimal solution for his client. The end result was that Brendan had the confidence of knowing he had assessed all viable energy conservation measures (ECMs), and the client was able to install a ground-source heat pump system that would otherwise have been financially out of reach.
There are often many ECMs in your model that you can realistically influence, such as glazing, shading, insulation, lighting, HVAC etc. These are your "design variables". For each variable you have a number of choices on the cost vs energy performance spectrum, for example LED vs fluorescent lighting. The total number of possible design alternatives is the number of choices raised to the power of the number of variables. So assuming ten design variables and only 3 choices for each variable there are 59,049 potential solutions. If you increase the number of choices to ten, there are a total possible 10 billion design alternatives.
Clearly it's not possible (or necessary) to simulate that many design options, so we simplify things in order to make them manageable...and are thus forced to accept that the best we can do is to get it "about right". But how far off optimal is "about right"? That will of course depend on the sensitivity of that particular building to the design variables and choices available to you. To compound that complexity, a building is effectively an ecosystem of interconnected variables, and when you change one design variable it is likely to change the optimal condition for many or all of the others. For example, changing the window size changes the solar gain and light transmission, which changes the optimal solution for the glazing type, shading, insulation, lighting and HVAC systems and controls etc. etc.
This webinar will show you how Brendan used optimisation to identify which ECMs had the greatest impact on the heating load and how he used that information to find the optimal balance between construction cost and operational energy savings. This webinar will illustrate how you could use optimisation to give you the confidence that you are actually specifying the optimal ECMs whilst reducing your design risk and maximising your client's return on investment.
You can register to watch this free webinar, or to access the recording here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3628973719187888143?source=Posts+on+lists
Best Wishes
David Cocking
Director I Tel: +44 (0)1453 755500 I david.cocking at designbuilder.co.uk
DesignBuilder Software Ltd, 1st Floor, Clarendon Court, 54-56 London Rd, Stroud, GL5 2AD
www.designbuilder.co.uk
[DB Logo Darker.png]
