%0 Report %D 2017 %T Small and Medium Building Efficiency Toolkit and Community Demonstration Program %A Mary Ann Piette %A Tianzhen Hong %A William J. Fisk %A Norman Bourassa %A Wanyu R. Chan %A Yixing Chen %A H.Y. Iris Cheung %A Toshifumi Hotchi %A Margarita Kloss %A Sang Hoon Lee %A Phillip N. Price %A Oren Schetrit %A Kaiyu Sun %A Sarah C. Taylor-Lange %A Rongpeng Zhang %K CBES %K commercial buildings %K energy efficiency %K energy modeling %K energy savings %K indoor air quality %K indoor environmental quality %K outdoor air measurement technology %K outdoor airflow intake rate %K retrofit %K ventilation rate %X

Small commercial buildings in the United States consume 47 percent of all primary energy consumed in the building sector. Retrofitting small and medium commercial buildings may pose a steep challenge for owners, as many lack the expertise and resources to identify and evaluate cost-effective energy retrofit strategies. To address this problem, this project developed the Commercial Building Energy Saver (CBES), an energy retrofit analysis toolkit that calculates the energy use of a building, identifies and evaluates retrofit measures based on energy savings, energy cost savings, and payback. The CBES Toolkit includes a web app for end users and the CBES Application Programming Interface for integrating CBES with other energy software tools. The toolkit provides a rich feature set, including the following:

  1. Energy Benchmarking providing an Energy Star score
  2. Load Shape Analysis to identify potential building operation improvements
  3. Preliminary Retrofit Analysis which uses a custom developed pre-simulated database
  4. Detailed Retrofit Analysis which utilizes real time EnergyPlus simulations

In a parallel effort the project team developed technologies to measure outdoor airflow rate; commercialization and use would avoid both excess energy use from over ventilation and poor indoor air quality resulting from under ventilation.

If CBES is adopted by California’s statewide small office and retail buildings, by 2030 the state can anticipate 1,587 gigawatt hours of electricity savings, 356 megawatts of non-coincident peak demand savings, 30.2 megatherms of natural gas savings, $227 million of energy-related cost savings, and reduction of emissions by 757,866 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. In addition, consultant costs will be reduced in the retrofit analysis process.

CBES contributes to the energy savings retrofit field by enabling a straightforward and uncomplicated decision-making process for small and medium business owners and leveraging different levels of assessment to match user background, preference, and data availability.

%8 03/2017 %G eng %2 LBNL-2001054 %R 10.7941/S93P70 %0 Conference Proceedings %B 2010 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings %D 2010 %T Systems Approach to Energy Efficient Building Operation: Case Studies and Lessons Learned in a University Campus %A Satish Narayanan %A Michael G. Apte %A Philip Haves %A Mary Ann Piette %A John Elliott %X

This paper reviews findings from research conducted at a university campus to develop a robust systems approach to monitor and continually optimize building energy performance. The field analysis, comprising three projects, included detailed monitoring, model-based analysis of system energy performance, and implementation of optimized control strategies for both district and building-scale systems. One project used models of the central cooling plant and campus building loads, and weather forecasts to analyze and optimize the energy performance of a district cooling system, comprising chillers, pumps and a thermal energy storage system. Fullscale implementation of policies devised with a model predictive control approach produced energy savings of about 5%, while demonstrating that the heuristic policies implemented by the operators were close to optimal during peak cooling season and loads. Research was also conducted to evaluate whole building monitoring and control methods. A second project performed in a campus building combined sub-metered end-use data, performance benchmarks, energy simulations and thermal load estimators to create a web-based energy performance visualization tool prototype. This tool provides actionable energy usage information to aid in facility operation and to enable performance improvement. In a third project, an alternative to demand controlled ventilation enabled by direct measurements of building occupancy levels was assessed. Simulations were used to show 5-15% reduction in building HVAC system energy usage when using estimates of actual occupancy levels.

%B 2010 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings %I Omnipress %C Asilomar, California, USA %@ 0-918249-60-0 %G eng