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.
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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.

Publications

Publications By Research Area

2022

Pinto, Giuseppe, Riccardo Messina, Han Li, Tianzhen Hong, Marco Savino Piscitelli, and Alfonso Capozzoli."Sharing is caring: An extensive analysis of parameter-based transfer learning for the prediction of building thermal dynamics."Energy and Buildings 276 (2022) 112530. DOI

Malik, Jeetika, Ronita Bardhan, Tianzhen Hong, and Mary Ann Piette."Developing occupant archetypes within urban low-income housing: A case study in Mumbai, India."Building Simulation 15.9 (2022) 1661 - 1683. DOI

Hinkelman, Kathryn, Saranya Anbarasu, Michael Wetter, Antoine Gautier, and Wangda Zuo."A fast and accurate modeling approach for water and steam thermodynamics with practical applications in district heating system simulation."Energy 254 (2022) 124227. DOI

Zanetti, Ettore, Donghun Kim, David Blum, Rossano Scroccia, and Marcello Aprile."Performance comparison of quadratic, nonlinear, and mixed integer nonlinear MPC formulations and solvers on an air source heat pump hydronic floor heating system."Journal of Building Performance Simulation (2022) 1 - 19. DOI

Kim, Donghun, Zhe Wang, James Brugger, David Blum, Michael Wetter, Tianzhen Hong, and Mary Ann Piette."Site demonstration and performance evaluation of MPC for a large chiller plant with TES for renewable energy integration and grid decarbonization."Applied Energy 321 (2022) 119343. DOI

Sun, Kaiyu, Tianzhen Hong, Janghyun Kim, and Barry Hooper."Application and evaluation of a pattern-based building energy model calibration method using public building datasets."Building Simulation 15.8 (2022) 1385 - 1400. DOI

Prakash, Anand Krishnan, Marco Pritoni, Margarita Kloss, Mary Ann Piette, Michel Kamel, and Dotty Hage."Cloud-Control of Legacy Building Automation System: A case study."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Walker, Iain S., Brennan Less, David M. Lorenzetti, Michael D. Sohn, and Nuria Casquero-Modrego."Compartmentalization and Ventilation System Impacts on Air and Contaminant Transport for a Multifamily Building."Buildings XV Conference (2022).

Roa, Carlos Duarte, Paul Raftery, Rupam Singla, Marco Pritoni, and Therese Peffer."Detecting Passing Valves at Scale Across Different Buildings and Systems: A Brick Enabled and Mortar Tested Application."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Casillas, Armando, Guanjing Lin, Jessica Granderson, Sen Huang, and Yan Chen."Development of a Simulated Air Handling Unit Fault Dataset for FDD Tools: Lessons Learned and Considerations for FDD Developers."2022 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Helmns, Dre, Armando Casillas, Anand Prakash, David Blum, Marco Pritoni, Spencer M. Dutton, Jonathan Woolley, and Subhrajit Chakraborty."Heat Pumps with Phase Change Thermal Storage: Flexible, Efficient, and Electrification Friendly."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Teso, Lorenzo, Laura Carnieletto, Kaiyu Sun, Wanni Zhang, Andrea Gasparella, Piercarlo Romagnoni, Angelo Zarrella, and Tianzhen Hong."Large scale energy analysis and renovation strategies for social housing in the historic city of Venice."Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 52 (2022) 102041. DOI

Teso, Lorenzo, Laura Carnieletto, Kaiyu Sun, Wanni Zhang, Andrea Gasparella, Piercarlo Romagnoni, Angelo Zarrella, and Tianzhen Hong."Large scale energy analysis and renovation strategies for social housing in the historic city of Venice."Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 52 (2022) 102041. DOI

Gerke, Brian F., Sarah J. Smith, Samanvitha Murthy, Aditya Khandekar, Cong Zhang, Sunhee Baik, Shreya Agarwal, Jingjing Liu, Richard E. Brown, Mary Ann Piette, and Peter Alstone."Overview of Phase 4 of the California Demand Response Potential Study." (2022).

Singh, Reshma, Samuel Fernandes, Anand Prakash, Paul A. Mathew, Jessica Granderson, Colman Snaith, Rahul Pusapati, Prakash Jadhav, Avideh Zakhor, Rishi Upadhyay, Ozgur Gonen, and Harry Bergmann."Scaling Building Energy Audits through Machine Learning Methods on Novel Drone Image Data."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Roth, Amir, Michael Wetter, Kyle Benne, Yan Chen, Gabriel Fierro, Marco Pritoni, Avijit Saha, and Draguna Vrabie."Towards Digital and Performance-Based Supervisory HVAC Control Delivery."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Yu, Lili, Jingjing Liu, Rongxin Yin, Mary Ann Piette, Marco Pritoni, Armando Casillas, Monica Neukomm, and Amir Roth."When Do Efficiency and Demand Flexibility Go Hand-in-hand?."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Sun, Kaiyu, Patricia Kusumah, Wanni Zhang, Max Wei, and Tianzhen Hong."Exploring Decarbonization and Clean Energy Pathways for Disadvantaged Communities in California."5th International Conference on Building Energy and Environment (2022).

Luo, Na, Gabe Fierro, Yapan Liu, Bing Dong, and Tianzhen Hong."Extending the Brick schema to represent metadata of occupants."Automation in Construction 139 (2022) 104307. DOI

Blum, David, Zhe Wang, Chris Weyandt, Donghun Kim, Michael Wetter, Tianzhen Hong, and Mary Ann Piette."Field demonstration and implementation analysis of model predictive control in an office HVAC system."Applied Energy 318 (2022) 119104. DOI

Malik, Jeetika, Elie Azar, Ardeshir Mahdavi, and Tianzhen Hong."A level-of-details framework for representing occupant behavior in agent-based models."Automation in Construction 139 (2022) 104290. DOI

Casillas, Armando, Yimin Chen, Guanjing Lin, Jessica Granderson, Sen Huang, and Zhelun Chen."Modeling Air Handling Units to Create a Diverse Fault Dataset for FDD Innovation: Lessons Learned and Recommendations."7th International High Performance Buildings Conference (2022). DOI

Li, Haoran, Juan Hou, Tianzhen Hong, and Natasa Nord."Distinguish between the economic optimal and lowest distribution temperatures for heat-prosumer-based district heating systems with short-term thermal energy storage."Energy 248 (2022) 123601. DOI

Delp, William W., Brennan Less, Haoran Zhao, Spencer M. Dutton, Wanyu R. Chan, and Brett C. Singer."Simulation-Based Analysis of Impacts of Reduced Envelope and Duct Air Leakage on Indoor Air Pollutant Concentrations in Occupied Manufactured Homes." (2022).

Malik, Jeetika, Ardeshir Mahdavi, Elie Azar, Handi Chandra Putra, Christiane Berger, Clinton Andrews, and Tianzhen Hong."Ten questions concerning agent-based modeling of occupant behavior for energy and environmental performance of buildings."Building and Environment 217 (2022) 109016. DOI