Deriving sequences of operation for air handling units through building performance optimization

Operational parameters of air handling units (AHUs) play an important role in the energy and comfort performance of commercial buildings. Current guidelines to determine these parameters are based on heuristics and are not informed by formal optimization. This paper presents a building performance optimization method to derive sequence of operations for multi-zone AHUs. To this end, 27 variants of a generic EnergyPlus office building model are built representing three levels of occupancy, envelope, and HVAC capacity scenarios. The supply temperature, morning start time, and economizer settings of the model are optimized for the 27 scenarios by using a genetic algorithm. The results highlight that optimal supply temperature setpoints transition from similar to 12 degrees C to a range of similar to 16 degrees C to similar to 20 degrees C over an outdoor temperature range of similar to 20 degrees C to similar to 0 degrees C. Energy savings are estimated as similar to 20% relative to a reference case with a constant supply temperature and preheating/precooling period.