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

2021

Doughtry, Christine, Jianjun Hu, Patrick Dobson, Peter Nico, and Michael Wetter."Coupling subsurface and above-surface models for optimizing the design of borefields and district heating and cooling systems in the presence of varying water-table depth."46th Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering (2021).

Walter, Travis, and Paul A Mathew."GHG policy impacts for Seattle’s buildings: targets, timing, and scope."Buildings and Cities 2 (2021). DOI

Li, Han, Zhe Wang, and Tianzhen Hong."Occupant-Centric key performance indicators to inform building design and operations."Journal of Building Performance Simulation (2021) 1 - 29. DOI

Wetter, Michael, Paul Ehrlich, Antoine Gautier, Milica Grahovac, Philip Haves, Jianjun Hu, and Kun Zhang."Open Building Control." (2021).

Gui, Chenxi, Da Yan, Tianzhen Hong, Chan Xiao, Siyue Guo, and Yifan Tao."Vertical meteorological patterns and their impact on the energy demand of tall buildings."Energy and Buildings 232 (2021) 110624. DOI

Sulzer, Matthias, Sven Werner, Stefan Mennel, and Michael Wetter."Vocabulary for the fourth generation of district heating and cooling."Smart Energy 1 (2021) 100003. DOI

Geisler-Moroder, David, Eleanor S Lee, Gregory J Ward, Bruno Bueno, Lars O Grobe, Taoning Wang, Bertrand Deroisy, and Helen Rose Wilson."BSDF Generation Procedures for Daylighting Systems." (2021). DOI

Ding, Chao, Carolyn Szum, Han Li, Nan Zhou, and Clay Nesler."Data-Driven Analysis Tool Plays Critical Role in Climate Neutral Buildings."Advances in Applied Energy 2 (2021) 100014. DOI

Helmns, Dre, David Blum, Spencer M Dutton, and Van P Carey."Development and Validation of a Latent Thermal Energy Storage Model Using Modelica."Energies 14.1 (2021) 194. DOI

Chan, Wanyu R, Brennan Less, and Iain S Walker."DOE Deep Energy Retrofit Cost Survey." (2021).

Singer, Brett C, Wanyu R Chan, William W Delp, Iain S Walker, and Haoran Zhao."Effective Kitchen Ventilation for Healthy Zero Net Energy Homes with Natural Gas." (2021).

Cao, Xinyun, Runming Yao, Chao Ding, Nan Zhou, Wei Yu, Jinyang Yao, Jie Xiong, Qiang Xu, Li Pan, and Baizhan Li."Energy-quota-based integrated solutions for heating and cooling of residential buildings in the Hot Summer and Cold Winter zone in China."Energy and Buildings 236 (2021) 110767. DOI

Qian, Mingyang, Da Yan, Tianzhen Hong, and Hua Liu."Operation and performance of VRF systems: Mining a large-scale dataset."Energy and Buildings 230 (2021) 110519. DOI

Sun, Kaiyu, Na Luo, Xuan Luo, and Tianzhen Hong."Prototype energy models for data centers."Energy and Buildings 231 (2021) 110603. DOI

Feldhausen, John J, David C Bell, Shane T Kosir, Joshua S Heyne, Corinne D Scown, Vi H Rapp, and Ana Comesana."The Co-Optimization of Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Cost, Emissions, and Performance."AIAA Scitech 2021 ForumAIAA Scitech 2021 Forum (2021). DOI

Booten, Chuck, Prakash Rao, Vi H Rapp, Roderick Jackson, and Ravi S Prasher."Theoretical Minimum Thermal Load in Buildings."Joule 5.1 (2021) 24 - 46. DOI

Langevin, Jared, Chioke B Harris, Aven Satre-Meloy, Handi Chandra Putra, Andrew Speake, Elaina Present, Rajendra Adhikari, Eric Wilson, and Andrew Satchwell."U.S. Building Energy Efficiency and Flexibility as an Electric Grid Resource."SSRN Electronic Journal (2021). DOI

Rao, Prakash, Paul Sheaffer, Yuting Chen, Miriam L Goldberg, Benjamin Jones, Jeff Cropp, and Jordan Hester."U.S. Industrial and Commercial Motor System Market Assessment Report Volume 1: Characteristics of the Installed Base." (2021). DOI

Less, Brennan, Iain S Walker, Nuria Casquero-Modrego, and Leo I Rainer."The Cost of Decarbonization and Energy Upgrade Retrofits for US Homes." (2021).

Singh, Reshma, Monto Mani, and Swapnil Joshi."Transforming India's Built Environment: A 2050 Vision for Wellness and Resilience." (2021).

Robinson, Alastair, and Ranjith Narasimhamurthy."Validation of District Energy Systems for American Communities." (2021).

2020

Fierro, Gabe, Marco Pritoni, Moustafa Abdelbaky, Daniel Lengyel, John Leyden, Anand Prakash, Pranav Gupta, Paul Raftery, Therese Peffer, Greg Thomson, and David Culler."Mortar: An Open Testbed for Portable Building Analytics."ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks 16.1 (2020) 1 - 31. DOI

Ueno, Tsuyoshi, and Alan K Meier."A method to generate heating and cooling schedules based on data from connected thermostats."Energy and Buildings 228 (2020) 110423. DOI

Liu, Jingjing, and Norman Bourassa."Continuously Improving Energy and Water Management."ASHRAE Journal (2020). DOI

Cho, Brian, Teresa Dayrit, Yuan Gao, Zhe Wang, Tianzhen Hong, Alex Sim, and Kesheng Kesheng."Effective Missing Value Imputation Methods for Building Monitoring Data."IEEE BigData 2020 (2020). DOI