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.

Publications

Publications By Research Area

2022

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

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

Grant, Peter, and Christoph Gehbauer."Evaluating the Impacts of Weather Forecast Inaccuracy on Performance of Model Predictive Control for Dynamic Facades."2022 Building Performance Modeling Conference and SimBuild (2022).

Regnier, Cynthia, Paul A Mathew, Jordan Shackelford, Sang Hoon Lee, Alastair Robinson, and Travis Walter."Multi-technology building system retrofits for utility incentive programs: Savings, costs and baseline considerations."Energy and Buildings (2022). 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

Fauchier-Magnan, Nicolas, Joshua Morejohn, and Marco Pritoni."A low-cost centralized HVAC control system solution for energy savings, load shedding, and improved maintenance."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). 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

Liu, Jingjing, Lili Yu, Rongxin Yin, Mary Ann Piette, Marco Pritoni, Armando Casillas, Monica Neukomm, and Amir Roth."Benchmarking Demand Flexibility in Commercial Buildings and Flattening the Duck – Addressing Baseline and Commissioning Challenges."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Earni, Shankar, and Philip Coleman."Better bang for your buck? Comparing savings realization from ESPCs and direct-funded projects."ACEEE Summer Study 2022 (2022). DOI

Prakash, Anand, 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

Nordman, Bruce, Marco Pritoni, Mary Ann Piette, and Anand Prakash."Communication Requirements for Price-Based Grid Coordination."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

Lin, Guanjing, Armando Casillas, Maggie Sheng, and Jessica Granderson."Evaluating the Performance of HVAC Optimal Control Based on Real-time Floor-by-Floor Occupancy Data."ACEEE (2022).

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

Meier, Alan K, Abigail A Daken, and Leo Rainer."Long-term trends in connected thermostat performance."The ECEEE 2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency (2022).

Pritoni, Marco, Guanjing Lin, Yimin Chen, John House, Eliot Crowe, and Jessica Granderson."Market Barriers and Drivers for the Next Generation Fault Detection and Diagnostic Tools."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Gerke, Brian F, Sarah Josephine 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).

Langner, Rois, Eliot Crowe, and Jessica Granderson."Quantifying the Value of Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings through Field 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

Paul, Lazlo, Anand Prakash, Kun Zhang, Marco Pritoni, and Richard E Brown."SolarPlus Optimizer: Integrated Control of Solar, Batteries, and Flexible Loads for Small Commercial Buildings."2022 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022).