| Building Technology and Urban Systems

About Us +
Researchers in the Building Technology & Urban Systems Division (BTUS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory develop data and technologies that increase energy efficiency and improve the health, safety and comfort of building occupants, in the United States and worldwide.

We work closely with industry partners, academics and government officials to achieve these goals, and share our research widely
Research +
We are at the forefront of cutting-edge research that redefines building technology and explores all areas of urban systems.

We have been leaders for decades in developing energy-efficient windows, improving indoor air quality, coming up with new ideas to fix the nation's electricity grid, and so much more.

Visit our research areas at the right to find out more.
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Publications +
Enjoy presentations from Building Technology & Urban systems research experts on a wide variety of topics in the areas of building energy efficiency, the electricity grid and how it relates to buildings and much more.
- Presentations
News
Tools & Guides +
Explore our tools, guidebooks and software and download for free.

We offer a variety of technologies designed to simulate and model real-world circumstances to assist in energy-saving programs and help building owners build better buildings. These tools can help calculate performance of building systems like windows and shades, help consumers and builders pick the best windows for a variety of applications and much more.

2012

Nouidui, Thierry Stephane, Michael Wetter, and Wangda Zuo."Validation of the Window Model of the Modelica Buildings Library." (2012).

Zhu, Dandan, Tianzhen Hong, and Chuang Wang."Comparison of Building Energy Modeling Programs: Building Loads." (2012).

Zhu, Dandan, Tianzhen Hong, Da Yan, and Chuang Wang."Comparative research in building energy modeling programs."China Annual HVACR Conference (2012).

Zuo, Wangda, Mingang Jin, and Qingyan Chen."Reduction of numerical viscosity in FFD model."Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics 6.2 (2012) 234-247.

Wang, Liping, Philip Haves, and John Breshears."The Energy Saving Potential of Membrane-Based Enthalpy Recovery in Vav Systems for Commercial Office Buildings."SimBuild 2012 IBPSA Conference (2012).

Jin, Mingang, Wangda Zuo, and Qingyan Chen."Validation of three dimensional fast fluid dynamics for indoor airflow simulations."the 2nd International Conference on Building Energy and Environment (COBEE2012) (2012) 1055-1062.

2011

Maile, Tobias, Vladimir Bazjanac, James O'Donnell, and Matthew Garr."A software tool to compare measured and simulated building energy performance data."IBPSA Building Simulation 2011 (2011).

Bazjanac, Vladimir, Tobias Maile, Cody Rose, James O'Donnell, Natasa Mrazovic, Elmer Morrissey, and Benjamin Welle."An Assessment of the use of Building Energy Performance Simulation in Early Design."IBPSA Building Simulation 2011 (2011).

Nouidui, Thierry Stephane, Michael Wetter, Zhengwei Li, Xiufeng Pang, Prajesh Bhattacharya, and Philip Haves."BACnet and Analog/Digital Interfaces of the Building Controls Virtual Test Bed."Proceedings of the 12th IBPSA Conference (2011) p. 294-301.

Haves, Philip, Prajesh Bhattacharya, Thierry Stephane Nouidui, Michael Wetter, Zhengwei Li, and Xiufeng Pang."BacNet and Analog/Digital Interfaces of the Building Controls Virtual Testbed." (2011).

See, Richard, Philip Haves, Pramod Sreekanathan, Mangesh Basarkar, James O'Donnell, and Kevin Settlemyre."Development of a user interface for the EnergyPlus whole building energy simulation program."IBPSA Building Simulation 2011 (2011).

Basarkar, Mangesh, Philip Haves, Xiufeng Pang, Liping Wang, and Tianzhen Hong."Modeling and simulation of HVAC faults in EnergyPlus."Building Simulation 2011 (2011).

Basarkar, Mangesh, Xiufeng Pang, Liping Wang, and Tianzhen Hong."Modeling and simulation of HVAC Results in EnergyPlus." (2011).

Wetter, Michael, Wangda Zuo, and Thierry Stephane Nouidui."Modeling of Heat Transfer in Rooms in the Modelica "Buildings" Library."Proceedings of Building Simulation 2011 (2011) 1096-1103.

Pang, Xiufeng, Prajesh Bhattacharya, Zheng O'Neill, Philip Haves, Michael Wetter, and Trevor Bailey."Real-time Building Energy Simulation using EnergyPlus and the Building Controls Virtual Test Bed."Proceedings of the 12th IBPSA Conference (2011) p. 2890-2896.

Corry, Edward, Marcus Keane, James O'Donnell, and Andrea Costa."Systematic Development of an Operational BIM Utilising Simulation and Performance Data in Building Operation."IBPSA Building Simulation 2011 (2011).

O'Donnell, James, Richard See, Cody Rose, Tobias Maile, Vladimir Bazjanac, and Philip Haves."SimModel: A domain data model for whole building energy simulation."IBPSA Building Simulation 2011 (2011).

Raferty, Paul, Marcus Keane, and James O'Donnell."Calibrating whole building energy models: An evidence-based methodology."Energy and Buildings 43.9 (2011) 2356-2364. DOI

Zuo, Wangda, and Qingyan Chen."Validation of a Fast-Fluid-Dynamics Model for Predicting Distribution of Particles with Low Stokes Number."12th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate (Indoor Air 2011) (2011).

Torrens, J. J Ignacio, Marcus Keane, Andrea Costa, and James O'Donnell."Multi-Criteria Optimisation using Past, Real Time and Predictive Performance Benchmarks."Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 19.4 (2011) 1258-1265.

Zhu, Dandan, Chuang Wang, Da Yan, and Tianzhen Hong."A Comparison of DeST and EnergyPlus."China HVAC Simulation Conference (2011).

Wetter, Michael."Co-simulation of building energy and control systems with the Building Controls Virtual Test Bed."Journal of Building Performance Simulation 3.4 (2011). DOI

Zuo, Wangda, and Michael Wetter."Advanced simulations of building energy and control systems with an example of chilled water plant modeling."the 8th International Forum and Workshop on Combined Heat, Air, Moisture and Pollutant Simulations (CHAMPS 2011) (2011).

Bazjanac, Vladimir, Tobias Maile, James O'Donnell, Cody Rose, and Natasa Mrazovic."Data Enviroments and Processing in Sem-Automated Simulation with EnergyPlus."CIB W078-W102 (2011).

Pang, Xiufeng, and Mingsheng Liu."Prevention of Compressor Short Cycling in Direct-Expansion (DX) Rooftop Units, Part 1: Theoretical Analysis and Simulation."ASHRAE Transactions 117.2 (2011) 666-676.