Energy saving actions toward NZEBs with multiple-criteria optimization in current residential buildings

Abstract Energy performance improvement has become a priority for current buildings in recent years. To achieve expense-efficient solutions, retrofitting approaches should be defined based on the regulations This approach balances the economic and energy objectives, but some significant factors are neglected in current studies, like internal thermal comfort. In this paper, the association of the primary features of residential buildings and the description of the best solutions of retrofitting concerning the lowest energy use toward NZEBs with the minimum thermal inconvenience or the highest economic performance is assessed. A couple of a TRNSYS and the Improved Seagull Optimizer (ISO) were applied for the optimization and simulation objectives. It has resulted that zero-energy objectives can be achieved by common energy-saving actions considering that the internal thermal convenience can be compromised and the presentation of incentive is necessary for the development of the solutions. Here, the consistent energy-saving above 59% is achieved by the multi-objective evaluation but worsening the indoor thermal convenience.