Lead Performer: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) – Berkeley, CA
FY16 DOE Funding: $1,730,000
Project Term: Current – September 30, 2016
Funding Type: Direct Lab Funding

PROJECT OBJECTIVE

Many decision makers have a dire lack of information on buildings’ energy performance, because the data is difficult to collect, located in many decentralized locations, and in different formats. These barriers inhibit decision makers’ ability to make smart investments in energy efficiency retrofits, designs, and policies.

The Energy Department’s Commercial Buildings Integration Program has set out to address market barriers by developing a standardized, interoperable ecosystem of analysis tools. LBNL develops several of these tools, including:

  1. The Building Performance Database (BPD) is the nation's largest dataset of information about energy-related characteristics of commercial and residential buildings. It collects data from multiple sources to create a national, pooled, anonymous dataset, allowing users to to explore the data across real estate sectors and regions, and compare various physical and operational characteristics to gain a better understanding of market conditions and trends in energy performance.
  2. The Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) PlatformTM helps cities and states manage building energy performance data and identify opportunities for efficiency improvements in their jurisdictions. The Platform helps users easily combine data from multiple sources, clean and validate it, and share the information with others.
  3. The Building Energy Data Exchange Specification (BEDES) is a dictionary of terms and field formats to facilitate the exchange of building data between stakeholders. It provides common data specifications for exchanging data on building characteristics and energy consumption, facilitating the interaction of various federal data tools.

LBNL provides technical support for these tools and works to improve their users’ experience by growing the tools’ datasets and assisting with efforts to expand their adoption by state and local governments.

PROJECT IMPACT

The BPD, SEED, and BEDES tools offer the ability to collect, manage and analyze information about building performance, help implement energy efficiency programs and policies, and assist users with understanding a building’s potential. These analysis tools help make building energy performance data easily and more broadly available, while reducing the lack of measured data on building performance at a national scale. Decision makers can use these tools to collect, manage, and analyze information about buildings’ performance, implement energy efficiency programs and policies, and better understand the potential for and impacts of investing in energy efficiency.

CONTACTS

DOE Technology Manager: Sam Petty
Lead Performer: Paul Matthew, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

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