Optimal maintenance planning for building energy efficiency retrofitting from optimization and control system perspectives

Abstract

This paper discusses the maintenance plan optimization problem for the energy efficiency purpose in thebuilding energy efficiency retrofitting context. A subproblem namely the Building Retrofitted FacilitiesCorrective Maintenance Planning (BRFCMP) problem is proposed, where the corrective maintenancefor malfunctioning retrofitted items are involved. The aggregate performances of the homogeneousretrofitted item groups, instead of the individual item performances, are the main consideration of theoptimization issue. An aggregate population level optimization model is proposed to address the BRFCMPproblem. When further taking into account the uncertainties, the optimization problem is cast into anoptimal control problem to reduce the consequent adverse impact, given the dynamic nature of theaggregate performances of the item groups during operation. Both the optimization and control systemapproaches are applied to solve the BRFCMP problem without or considering uncertainties. An actualbuilding retrofitting project is used as the case study to investigate the important role of maintenanceto the building energy efficiency. The effectiveness of the proposed approaches is verified by simulationresults