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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

The Demand-Side Opportunity: The Roles of Distributed Solar and Building Energy Systems in a Decarbonized Grid

Building energy systems represent a significant and largely untapped demand-side grid resource. Buildings use about 75% of electricity in the United States, including around 80% of peak demand, meaning that changes in building energy use have significant implications for grid operations. Building energy technologies-including energy-efficient devices, flexible loads, and energy storage-can be coordinated and aggregated to perform similar functions as centralized grid assets. Recent advances in information and communication (ICT) technologies have significantly improved building energy technology automation, coordination, and aggregation capabilities. With declining costs and technological advances, building energy systems can increasingly compete with conventional grid assets such as natural gas plants. Building energy technologies enable the deployment of distributed solar photovoltaics (DPV). Energy-efficient buildings allow DPV to meet greater shares of building load while flexible loads and energy storage can reshape building load profiles to optimize the on-site use of DPV. Optimized on-site use of DPV increases the value proposition for DPV adoption and can help utilities cost-effectively integrate higher levels of DPV penetration. Together, DPV and building energy technologies could help grids achieve deep decarbonization more quickly and cost-effectively.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Opportunities to Expand Building Efficiency Programming at Community Colleges

According to the most recent U.S. Energy and Employment Report, more than 2.3 million workers in the United States are involved in activities that reduce energy usage in buildings. This workforce supports energy efficiency from the design of buildings and their systems through the manufacturing and trade of components and supplies involved in these systems to the installation, repair, and maintenance of these systems. Less than 10% of the workers in key building efficiency occupations have a bachelor’s or higher degree, compared to ~40% of the general workforce. Thus, the community college system is a key stakeholder in training and educating a large portion of the building efficiency workforce. Despite this, the literature review conducted for this report found almost no research focused on better understanding and supporting the role of community colleges as they train this workforce at scale. This report seeks to understand how and to what extent building efficiency and advanced building technology concepts are being addressed in community colleges as well as potential pathways for schools to consider to better prepare students to enter the building efficiency industry. The first section presents information from a literature review and data analysis to provide background on the building efficiency workforce, the types of building efficiency training and education available from community colleges, and the barriers and challenges that exist in the workforce. The second section offers a series of case studies that illustrate the various ways that building efficiency content can be addressed at community colleges. The final section provides an overview of the opportunities available to community colleges as well as considerations for schools that want to increase building efficiency programming.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Simulation-aided occupant-centric building design: A critical review of tools, methods, and applications

Occupants are active participants in their built environment, affecting its performance while simultaneously being affected by its design and indoor environmental conditions. With recent advances in computer modeling, simulation tools, and analysis techniques, topics such as human-building interactions and occupant behavior have gained significant interest in the literature given their premise of improving building design processes and operating strategies. In practice, the focus of occupant-centric literature has been mostly geared towards the latter (i.e., operation), leaving the implications on building design practices underexplored. This paper fills the gap by providing a critical review of existing studies applying computer-based modeling and simulation to guide occupant-centric building design. The reviewed papers are organized along four main themes, namely occupant-centric: (i) metrics of building performance, (ii) modeling and simulation approaches, (iii) design methods and applications, and (iv) supporting practices and mechanisms. Important barriers are identified for a more effective application of occupant-centric building design practices, including the limited consideration of metrics beyond energy efficiency (e.g., occupant well-being and space planning), the limited implementation and validation of the proposed methods, and the lack of integration of occupant behavior modeling in existing building performance simulation tools. Finally, future research directions are discussed, covering large-scale international data collection efforts to move from generic assumptions about occupant behavior to specific/localized knowledge, improved metrics of measuring building performance, and improved industry practices, such as building codes, to promote an occupant-in-the-loop approach to the building design process.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

Potential benefits and optimization of cool-coated office buildings: A case study in Chongqing, China

Increasing envelope facet albedos considerably reduces solar heat gain, thus yielding building cooling energy savings. Few studies have explored the potential benefits of utilizing cool coatings on building envelopes (“cool-coated buildings”) based on life-cycle cost analysis. A holistic approach integrating the field testing, building energy simulation, and a 20-year life-cycle-based optimization was developed to explore cool-coated building performance and the maximum net savings of optimal building envelope retrofit and design. Experimental results showed that applying cool coatings to a west wall of an office building in Chongqing, China reduced its exterior surface temperature by up to 9.3 °C in summer. Additionally, simulation results showed that in Chongqing, making the roof and walls cool could reduce annual HVAC electricity use by up to 11.9% in old buildings (with poorly insulated envelopes) and up to 5.9% in new buildings. Retrofitting old buildings with a cool roof provided the net savings per modified area with present values up to 42.8 CNY/m2; retrofitting a new building with a cool roof or cool walls was not cost-effective. Optimizing both envelope insulation and envelope albedo can achieve 5.6 times the net savings of optimizing the insulation only, and 1.6 times that of optimizing albedo only.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

Air Handling Unit Shutdowns During Scheduled Unoccupied Hours: US Commercial Building Stock Prevalence and Energy Impact

Commercial buildings account for 18% of U.S. energy consumption, with 44% used for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) 90.1 requires HVAC systems to shutdown fans and outdoor air ventilation during unoccupied times, only allowing fans to cycle on, without outdoor air, to maintain thermostat setpoints. However, it is minimally understood how often existing building operations align with energy code requirements and the energy implications of not doing so. This study used building automation system data from 843 buildings containing 5706 air handling units (AHUs) to determine three unoccupied AHU shutdown control schemes ranging in efficiency and then estimated their prevalence in the U.S. commercial building stock, segmented by building type. ComStock was then used to analyze the energy savings potential of implementing the most energy efficient unoccupied shutdown control scheme in non-participating buildings across the U.S commercial building stock. Results show that only 23% of AHUs align completely with the ASHRAE 90.1 requirement. ComStock modeling results show 4% annual stock energy savings by switching all non-participating buildings to the most efficient scheme, with 19% annual energy savings demonstrated for the median building switching from the least efficient scheme to the most efficient. Findings also show 114.5 TBtu electricity and 75.8 TBtu natural gas fuel savings when converting to the most efficient scheme. Furthermore, these findings help stakeholders understand the high prevalence of buildings not aligning with the ASHRAE-90.1 requirements for unoccupied AHU shutdowns and the energy savings potential of utilizing the most efficient unoccupied AHU shutdown scheme.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Virtual Metering for Monitoring Building Energy Consumption

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has standard metering requirements of commercial buildings for optimizing energy performance. The guiding principles are to continuously track and optimize energy performance and install building-level meters for electricity, natural gas, and steam. Some buildings at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have physical submeters monitoring their energy consumption, but these meters have proven to be unreliable. And, in most cases, replacing them has proven to be a slow process. Installing new submeters also requires a temporary lockout of the circuit on which they are being installed. Many buildings at LANL contain laboratories with ongoing experiments or data centers, which makes an equipment power outage nearly impossible to plan. This inability to plan power outages results in long-term submeter failures. Although most submeters are eventually replaced, failures lead to missing consumption data for some unpredictable, extended time. A building automation system (BAS) is a system that provides control and monitoring on a building to maintain the operational performance of the building and occupancy comfort. Many buildings at LANL currently have a BAS, and all new renovations and installs will include installing a BAS if one does not already exist. The intended purpose for a BAS is primarily to monitor the health and efficiency of a building; however, it is also possible to calculate equipment power and energy consumption using BAS information. This project aims to use virtual meters to monitor building energy consumption as a cost-effective and minimally labor-intensive alternative to installing physical submeters. The fault detection and diagnostics tool, SkySpark, provides a centralized database for all the data from the various BAS that are active at LANL. This data includes the information that is needed to create virtual meters for heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in most buildings, including heating and cooling loads. 9 This report begins with a detailed summary of the project, including the reasoning, procedure, and results. The specific processes of creating the various virtual meters are then identified. Then the limitations are discussed. And, lastly, the results and future potential are presented.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Aligning Ukrainian Building Energy Codes with the EPBD

The aim of this report is to support Ukraine in revising its building energy codes in line with regulations laid out by the Energy Performance in Buildings Directive (EPBD). The main objectives are to i) provide valuable information to help Ukraine align its building energy codes with EPBD requirements, ii) advance the capacity of key stakeholders in Ukraine to develop new regulations based on robust technical methodologies and analysis, iii) summarize building energy codes best practices using examples from the EU and elsewhere, and iv) recommend steps Ukraine can take to improve its building energy code regulations and implementation. This report summarizes EPBD requirements for new buildings, and buildings undergoing major renovations, related to cost-optimal and Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) requirements. This report highlights Ukraine’s progress in aligning it’s building energy codes with the aforementioned requirements and best practices regarding those requirements from the EU and internationally. Based on best practices and Ukraine’s current progress on requirements, recommendations are presented. A brief overview of the EPBD and building energy codes in Ukraine is also provided. Implementation related to building energy codes is touched upon as well. Potential next steps for Ukraine are outlined based on provided recommendations.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Future of Zero Energy Buildings: Produce, Respond, Regenerate: Preprint

The zero energy buildings concept is more than 20 years old, and the paradigm shift from buildings as energy consumers to buildings as energy producers is underway. Buildings also consume land and material resources, however, with attendant environmental impacts. Another paradigm is emerging: a built environment that produces energy and is environmentally responsive and regenerative. This paper investigates an updated framework for thinking about zero energy buildings that includes discussions of prioritizing renewables; determining on-site versus off-site generation; exploring how and when buildings should use energy; and balancing renewables, storage, and energy efficiency. Buildings are typically connected to the utility grid and the utility grid develops largely in response to the built environment. If more buildings’ real time electricity use aligned with renewable generation, more renewables would be added to the grid. Ultimately, the goal for zero energy buildings will be to use 100% renewables, 100% of the time, matching loads with energy storage and renewable generation at each discrete timestep over a year. This target is beyond the current zero energy definitions, which focus on an annual balance of renewable supply and energy demand and use the grid to “store” excess production to make up for hours without sufficient on-site renewable generation. This paper expands this upgraded concept and outlines simple metrics to evaluate the alignment of renewable sources and storage with building loads. This process can provide insights on building design considerations, including the use of flexible loads and optimal resource management.

ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Building Envelope Campaign – Program Design and Stakeholder Engagement

Building envelope technologies impact approximately 30% of the primary energy consumed by residential and commercial buildings. The Building Envelope Campaign (BEC), which is part of the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Program, is a market transformation effort to help building owners and managers invest in high performance building envelope technologies for both new and existing commercial buildings. The success of the Campaign has depended on constructing a compelling program design plus organizing a technical team with ability to effectively recruit Participants and Supporters from across industry and keep them engaged.The design of the campaign included developing a strategy to leverage other technology campaigns within the Better Buildings program, identifying stakeholders (including diverse member groups that may have been underserved by previous technology campaigns), recruiting Supporters and Participants, and providing technical assistance in the form of a campaign-specific Building Envelope Performance tool and metric to help benchmark various building envelope options.Engagement had to overcome three main challenges – securing the Campaign Supporters/Participants, helping participants to use the envelope tool to evaluate project options, and getting those participants to submit successful envelope projects for evaluation and recognition by the program. The concepts are simple but program design/implementation and, in particular, sustaining stakeholder engagement can be challenging. This paper will highlight the approaches taken in: program design, engaging industry members, identifying and reaching underserved stakeholders, demonstrating benefits of high performance building envelope technologies and making the case for engaging in this campaign.

McLeod, Hayley↗
DOE OSTI2022

Online Calculator to Evaluate the Impact of Airtightness on Residential Building Energy Consumption and Moisture Transfer

Energy consumption in residential buildings is primarily driven by space conditioning applications. Space heating and cooling, on average, consume approximately 50% of the energy in the residential buildings in the U.S. The primary energy use due to infiltration is more than 2.8 Quads, which is 29% of primary energy consumption attributable to fenestration and building envelope components in residential buildings in US in 2010. There are advanced air barrier technologies and construction practices to reduce air leakage in buildings, which are currently available in the market. However, the lack of adequate information on their impact on energy consumption and the durability of buildings has caused the slow adoption of these technologies and methods. In the past, the authors developed an online calculator that estimates the potential energy and cost savings in major U.S., Canadian and Chinese cities from improvement in airtightness in commercial buildings. In 2018–2019, the calculator was expanded to add moisture transfer calculations, given that air leakage through the building envelope can have a significant impact on moisture transfer. The calculator is again being expanded by adding residential and additional commercial building data. In this paper, we present the impact of airtightness in residential buildings on energy consumption and moisture transfer. The study includes the analysis of airtightness in 52 major cities in the U.S. and five cities in Canada on a residential building that includes a crawlspace and has a gas furnace.

Kunwar, Niraj↗
DOE OSTI2023

Simulation-based characterization of the variability of earthquake risk to buildings in the near-field

Recent advancements in high performance computing platforms and computational workflow for regional-scale simulations are enabling unprecedented modeling of fault-to-structure earthquake processes. Regional simulations resolving ground motions at frequencies relevant to engineered systems are becoming computationally viable and provide a new capability to improve understanding of the geographical distribution and intensity of risk to buildings and critical infrastructure. As computational capabilities advance, it is essential to move beyond illustrative single rupture realizations for scenario earthquake events towards the development of a full suite of rupture realizations that appropriately characterize the range of risk to building systems. The work described in this article investigates the application of a suite of fault rupture realizations with the objective of assessing near-fault, site-specific seismic demand variability for building structures. A representative high-performance regional-scale computational model is utilized to execute ground motion and building response simulations based on 18 kinematic rupture realizations of an M7 strike-slip scenario earthquake. The fault rupture models for the scenario earthquake are created by systematically perturbing the hypocenter location and stochastically generating rupture parameters (slip, rise time, rake angle) to represent a breadth of ground motion intensities resulting from the spatial and temporal variabilities of an earthquake rupture process. The resulting seismic demand variability for three-story (short period) and forty-story (long period) steel moment-resisting frame buildings is characterized in terms of the median and distribution of peak inter-story drift ratio for a range of near-fault sites. The full suite of 18 fault rupture realizations and approximately 280,000 nonlinear dynamic building simulations indicate that the three-story building undergoes higher median seismic demand and significantly greater variability of demand at a given site than the forty-story building, which has important implications for the level of certainty in predicting building performance during an earthquake. The simulations performed provide deeper insight into the relationship between fault rupture parameterization and building response, which is essential information for developing a representative suite of rupture realizations for specific earthquake scenarios.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Data-driven key performance indicators and datasets for building energy flexibility: A review and perspectives

Energy flexibility, through short-term demand-side management (DSM) and energy storage technologies, is now seen as a major key to balancing the fluctuating supply in different energy grids with the energy demand of buildings. This is especially important when considering the intermittent nature of ever-growing renewable energy production, as well as the increasing dynamics of electricity demand in buildings. This paper provides a holistic review of (1) data-driven energy flexibility key performance indicators (KPIs) for buildings in the operational phase and (2) open datasets that can be used for testing energy flexibility KPIs. The review identifies a total of 48 data-driven energy flexibility KPIs from 87 recent and relevant publications. These KPIs were categorized and analyzed according to their type, complexity, scope, key stakeholders, data requirement, baseline requirement, resolution, and popularity. Moreover, 330 building datasets were collected and evaluated. Of those, 16 were deemed adequate to feature building performing demand response or building-to-grid (B2G) services. The DSM strategy, building scope, grid type, control strategy, needed data features, and usability of these selected 16 datasets were analyzed. This review reveals future opportunities to address limitations in the existing literature: (1) developing new data-driven methodologies to specifically evaluate different energy flexibility strategies and B2G services of existing buildings; (2) developing baseline-free KPIs that could be calculated from easily accessible building sensors and meter data; (3) devoting non-engineering efforts to promote building energy flexibility, standardizing data-driven energy flexibility quantification and verification processes; and (4) curating and analyzing datasets with proper description for energy flexibility assessm.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Long-term carbon emission reduction potential of building retrofits with dynamically changing electricity emission factors

Buildings account for approximately 36% of the United States' total carbon emissions and building retrofits have great potential to reduce carbon emissions. Current research adopts a constant electricity emission factor although it changes over time due to the increase of renewable energy generation. Here, to accurately predict emission reduction potential of building retrofits, this study develops a novel method by using dynamically changing electricity emission factors. Using medium office buildings as an example, we predicted emission reduction of eight building retrofit measures from 2020 to 2050 in five locations in the U.S. with distinct climates and renewable adoption rates. To evaluate emission reduction potential sensitivity to the compositions of electricity generation, five scenarios for renewable energy adoptions are investigated. The results reveal several new phenomena on emission reduction potential of building retrofits for medium offices in the U.S.: (1) it decreases from 2026 to 2050; (2) it has the same trend with coal usage; and (3) it reaches the maximum under the high renewable cost scenario. Based on the results, it is recommended that building retrofits should focus on 1) improving lighting and equipment efficiency; 2) locations with higher coal usage rate, and 3) buildings under the high renewable cost scenario. The new method can also be used for predicting emission reduction potential of the building sector in the U.S. by applying to other building types and regions.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Vertical meteorological patterns and their impact on the energy demand of tall buildings

In accordance with the developing economy and growing population, an increasing number of tall buildings have been constructed over the last 20 years. In 2017, there were 144 new buildings worldwide that were 200 m or greater in height; 50% of these buildings were in China. Due to the vertical gradient impact of meteorological parameters, the energy performance of tall buildings differs from that of general buildings. Few studies exist on vertical meteorological changes using measured data at different heights. Most studies on dynamic energy simulation simulate meteorological parameters using models. This study explores vertical meteorological patterns using hourly dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed data from 2007 to 2017 for a 325 m meteorological tower in Beijing. The temperature decreased significantly with increasing altitude (~0.9 °C per 100 m), while the daily temperature difference decreased with increasing altitude. The absolute humidity did not change significantly with height. The wind speed increased with altitude at approximately 2 m/s per 100 m. The building simulation showed that the annual heating load at a height of 320 m increased by 85% from that at 8 m; the annual cooling load decreased by 20%. Such significant differences in thermal loads for 300-m-tall buildings confirm the need to consider vertical meteorological differences in building performance simulations for tall buildings. A greater number of measurement points at different heights improve the simulation accuracy. Finally, guidance on selecting the heights for vertical metrological measurements is provided based on the influences of building thermal loads.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

Evaluating performance of different generative adversarial networks for large-scale building power demand prediction

We report as an unsupervised-learning data-driven model, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have recently attracted a lot of attention for various applications. There is potential to apply GANs for large-scale building power demand prediction, which is needed for power grid operation. However, there are many GAN variations and it is unclear which GAN is suitable for this application. To answer this question, this paper identifies five promising GANs (Original GAN, cGAN, SGAN, InfoGAN, and ACGAN) and evaluates their performance for predicting building power demand at a large scale. Physics-based building energy models are developed to generate training and reference data. A new evaluation indicator that combines accuracy and reproducibility is proposed to evaluate the performance of different GANs in predicting building power demand. The results show that SGAN and InfoGAN are not suitable because they cannot control the number of generated building samples for different building types. The prediction performance among the Original GAN, cGAN, and ACGAN can vary depending on training sample sizes and number of building types. If the training sample size is sufficiently large, Original GAN and cGAN can predict building power demand more accurately than ACGAN with the same number of samples. If training samples are limited, Original GAN provides better accuracy than cGAN and ACGAN. When the number of building types increase, the prediction accuracy increases for cGAN, decreases for ACGAN, and remains the same for Original GAN. As a result, cGAN and Original GAN are recommended for large-scale building power demand prediction.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

Long-term carbon intensity reduction potential of K-12 school buildings in the United States

School buildings have a great potential for carbon emission reduction since their annual emission is about 72 million metric tons. Currently, more than 30% of school buildings were built before 1960 and are underperforming. To effectively reduce carbon emissions via school building retrofits, it is critical for policymakers to understand the carbon intensity reduction potential of retrofitting school buildings in different regions. Hence, this study develops a method to comprehensively assess the long-term carbon intensity reduction potential of aggregated commercial buildings on a county-by-county basis in the continental U.S. We apply this method to the K-12 school buildings including primary and secondary school buildings. Here, this paper predicts the carbon intensity reduction potential of K-12 school buildings with eight building retrofit measures from 2022 to 2050 in the continental U.S. The results reveal several interesting findings: (1) In the approximately 3,000 counties of the U.S. from 2022 to 2050, the carbon intensity reduction potential of retrofitting K-12 school buildings in each county ranges from 0.41 kg/m 2 to 40.00 kg/m 2 . (2) Even in the same climate zone, the trends of carbon intensity reduction potential from 2022 to 2050 are different depending on their electricity sources. For example, in a hot and humid climate zone, the carbon intensity reduction potential in Florida will decrease from 2044 to 2048. However, in Mississippi, the carbon intensity reduction potential from 2044 to 2046 will increase due to the termination of the nuclear energy usage. (3) Generally, reducing lighting power density leads to more carbon intensity reduction in most states, but it might not be applicable for states with high clean energy penetration, such as Washington.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

Individualized empirical baselines for evaluating the energy performance of existing buildings

The evaluation of building energy performance requires a baseline for comparison. Common empirical baselines are usually used for existing buildings since they are fast and convenient. However, the same type of building at the same location will receive the same baseline despite their difference in usage. Individualized baselines by creating building energy models are possible solutions, but it is labor intensive and time-consuming. To fill the gap, this study is to develop individualized empirical baselines for existing buildings in a fast way. First, common empirical baselines are created based on survey data. Then, to get training samples, building energy models for large-scale existing buildings are created and simulated. So finally, based on simulation results, mathematical models to get individualized empirical baselines in a fast way are created. U.S. medium office buildings were used as an example to demonstrate the method. We developed 30 mathematical models for medium office buildings in two vintages (constructed before 1980 and after 1980) and 15 climate zones. The mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) between the individualized empirical baselines and the modeled baselines for those 30 mathematical models are all lower than 5.5%. An engineer can obtain the individualized empirical baseline for an existing building in a few seconds by using the open-source tool we developed.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Simulating Buildings While the Design is Still in the Architect's Imagination

Very early in the design process, prior to drawing a single line, architects get information from their client or prospective client trying to understand the nature and requirements of the building that needs to be designed. The design of the building is completely fluid, as the architect considers many options in their imagination. The overall massing of the building, the general shape and form, are being considered during this early step. Even for a simple box-shaped building, the aspect ratio between the east-west and the north-south dimensions of the building can greatly impact energy consumption due to daylighting availability. The prevailing winds and building orientation can impact natural ventilation. The locations of high and low population density spaces can also impact energy use. Deciding the floor area per office workstation or the size of the auditorium will impact energy use. Does making a building two stories instead of one reduce energy impacts by reducing roof area or does the additional volume for stairs and elevators result in more energy use. Since certain types of spaces require more windows for occupants than others, the locations of those spaces will determine how much glazing each building orientation has impacting daylighting as well as heating and cooling energy. The project was an attempted first step toward creating a system tailored toward architects for this very early stage in the design process to help them understand the energy impacts of design options. The approach was not to be based on drawing the building, and instead, the main inputs would have been the size of each type of space in the building. This report describes information gathered during the development that might be of use to others developing similar software as well as some of the software that was developed during the project. Phase II funding to continue this work was not pursued due to intellectual property issues discovered during the development of the commercialization plan.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗