Use jEPlus as an Efficient Building Design Optimisation Tool

Session 2 Paper 2, CIBSE ASHRAE Technical Symposium, Imperial College, London, UK
18th and 19th April 2012

jEPlus is an open source tool originally developed for managing complex parametric simulations using EnergyPlus (E+). If coupled with optimisation algorithms such as Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), it provides a convenient and highly efficient way to perform optimisation for building design and operation.

This paper discusses the general processes of optimisation, and how jEPlus being used for simplifying the tasks of setting up optimisation for building simulation users. An optimisation problem with a solution space of more than one million design options is presented as a case study. EAs is coupled with jEPlus using the methods described in the paper, to perform both multi-objective and single objective optimisation. It is found that the multi-objective approach can produce better results than single objective methods.