The presentations, news, research summaries, reports, and technology overviews are collected here by focus area and represent the body of work developed by the CBEI partners during the 5-year project period. For additional information on market challenges, approach, and impacts, see each focus area overview.
This report is the pdf version of the CBEI Final report and results.
This project developed new and improved methods of analyses of energy data that provide new metrics valuable to assist in targeting utility rebate customers for greater energy savings and recruitment of suitable buildings. If utility program managers apply both of those methods to their territory they can improve their outreach effort by focusing on the buildings that will save the most energy and focus on 15% to 28% of their customers depending on the methods they select.
This project developed new features for the DOE SEED platform including the import, storage, and management of data from multiple sources including smart meter interval data. These added tools enable large building portfolio owners to conduct comparative analyses of their portfolios against other portfolio owners, facilitating sharing and collaboration in addition to enabling executive and operational level analyses for actionable intelligence. The enhanced platform easily support energy benchmarking and disclosure initiatives, and can increase public awareness of energy consumption and resource conservation.
CBEI developed new analytics for benchmarking data that can be used to improve or develop utility DSM programs and thus demonstrate the usability of benchmarking data for utilities. This report compiles the different materials used to present these methods to various stakeholders. The team exceeded their targets for outreach by hosting 2 webinars, presenting in 5 additional events and sharing their findings with over 60 stakeholders.
Intended for property owners, portfolio managers and government officials, the Intermediate and Advanced Level – A Guide to Community-Wide Benchmarking Analysis guides offer further approaches to understanding the movement of Energy Star Portfolio Manager scores and the relationship to specific fuel use types.
During BP5, CBEI worked with NREL and ICF to support the DOE Energy Data Accelerator (EDA). CBEI focused on the stakeholder engagement and communication strategy. The responsibilities involved collecting feedback from municipalities and utilities regarding their success and experience with data aggregation and access strategies. CBEI also assisted the EDA program with the regional aspect of the exit strategy at the end of the Accelerator.
CBEI developed a web-based integrated design decision support tool which utilizes energy performance data generated through coupling of whole building energy simulation models with systematic search procedures and advanced data analysis techniques. This coupling process was extended with the introduction of a simulation-based numerical optimization framework for the minimization of life cycle costs for building enclosure materials and operational energy consumption for office retrofit cases. This integrated optimization program is highly automated (thereby saving user effort) and utilizes non-commercial, open-source and readily extensible existing toolkits.
CBEI conducted an analysis of energy use in New York City commercial and multifamily buildings. This paper describes energy and building characteristics for the overall population of buildings and using model-based clustering methods, this paper then identifies key clusters of energy use and building characteristics in the multifamily sector.
Policy implementers are interested in identifying the most effective ways to promote the use of benchmarking data in order to (a) add relevance to energy data in real estate transactions, and (b) increase investments into energy efficient building retrofits. This report provides feedback from representatives of more than 21 organizations operating in the Philadelphia, New York City, and regional or national markets on the benefits of public energy benchmarking data.
Between October 2008 and July 2014, Better Buildings EDA partners District of Columbia and Pepco successfully completed an extensive process of stakeholder engagement to enable whole building data access for multifamily, commercial, and federal building owners in their jurisdiction.
Between 2012 and 2015, Better Buildings Energy Data Accelerator partners Boston, Cambridge, and Eversource successfully completed an extensive process of stakeholder engagement to enable whole building data access for multi-family and commercial building owners in their jurisdiction.
For the past two years, the Better Buildings Energy Data Accelerator has been supporting pairs of local governments and their local utility companies to help building owners gain access to their building energy data.
FREE online training program on U.S. EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool and building information collection. 4 interactive training modules (free to public).
As a member of the Subtask 5.4 Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ) assessment team, the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics (CBPD) at Carnegie Mellon University conducted a Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) for Building 661 in Navy Yard, Philadelphia, PA, on July 10th, 2015.
Designed for energy optimization of building retrofit projects. Applicable to new buildings and other projects. Empire State Building Example: Display the relevant metrics (here it’s NPV and CO2 savings). Include uncertainty and sensitivity about future projections.