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

2025

Pereira, Flavia deAndrade, Kyriakos Katsigarakis, Dimitrios Rovas, Marco Pritoni, Conor Shaw, Lazlo Paul, Anand Prakash, Susana Martin-Toral, Donal Finn, and James O’Donnell."A semantics-driven framework to enable demand flexibility control applications in real buildings."Advanced Engineering Informatics 64 (2025) 103049. DOI

Paul, Lazlo, Flavia De Andrade Pereira, Anand Prakash, Sang woo Ham, Jingjuan Feng, Rich Brown, and Marco Pritoni."Open building operating system: a grid-responsive semantics-driven control platform for buildings."Science and Technology for the Built Environment 31.3 (2025) 294-311. DOI

2024

Chiosa, Roberto, Marco Savino Piscitelli, Marco Pritoni, and Alfonso Capozzoli."A portable application framework for energy management and information systems (EMIS) solutions using Brick semantic schema."Energy and Buildings 323 (2024) 114802. DOI

Paul, Lazlo, Marco Pritoni, Cynthia Regnier, Jason S MacDonald, Richard E Brown, and Cecilia Johnson."Architecting the Future: Exploring Coordinated Control Frameworks for Connected Communities."ACEEE Summer Study (2024).

Casillas, Armando, Thomas Defauw, Sang woo Ham, Dre Helmns, Lazlo Paul, Anand Prakash, Weiping Huang, Peter Grant, and Marco Pritoni."Demystifying Thermal Energy Storage Integrated Heat Pump Systems: Development of Generalized Sizing and Control Algorithms for Demand Flexibility."ACEEE Summer Study (2024).

Casillas, Armando, Jessica Granderson, Yimin Chen, John House, Guanjing Lin, Weiping Huang, Guhan Velmurugan, and Marco Pritoni."Innovating the next generation of commercial smart building software."ACEEE Summer Study (2024).

Ham, Sang woo, Lazlo Paul, Armando Casillas, Anand Prakash, Donghun Kim, Richard E Brown, Marco Pritoni, and Peter Grant."Practical challenges of model predictive control (MPC) for grid interactive small and medium commercial buildings."ACEEE Summer Study (2024).

Agarwal, Shreya, Marco Pritoni, Jessica Collier, Jeff Wanner, Ruth Taylor, Meghan McNulty, and Mary M Bryan."Through the looking glass: analyzing barriers to adoption of advanced rooftop unit controls through human-centered observational research."ACEEE Summer Study (2024).

Pereira, Flavia De Andrade, Lazlo Paul, Marco Pritoni, Armando Casillas, Anand Prakash, Weiping Huang, Conor Shaw, Susana Martin-Toral, Donal Finn, and James O’ Donnell."Enabling portable demand flexibility control applications in virtual and real buildings."Journal of Building Engineering 86 (2024) 108645. DOI

Ham, Sang woo, Lazlo Paul, Donghun Kim, Marco Pritoni, Richard E Brown, and Jingjuan Feng."Decarbonization of heat pump dual fuel systems using a practical model predictive control: Field demonstration in a small commercial building."Applied Energy 361 (2024) 122935. DOI

Liu, Jingjing, Mary Ann Piette, Marco Pritoni, Bruce Nordman, Peter Grant, Sarah Josephine Smith, Richard E Brown, Joe Bourg, Felipe Godinez, Matt Fung, and Mark S Martinez."Assessing Customer Experience and Business Models around Price-to-Device Communication and Smart Control Pathways in CalFlexHub." (2024). DOI

Nordman, Bruce, Margarita Kloss, Bijit Kundu, Nate Dewart, Anand Prakash, Laura Wong, Alanna Torres, Rachel Levine, Marco Pritoni, Jordan Shackelford, Heidi Werner, Rahul Athalye, Aditya Khandekar, Callie Clark, Chris Uraine, and Rebecca Aviles."Energy Reporting: Device Demonstration, Communication Protocols, and Codes and Standards." (2024).

Zanetti, Ettore, David Blum, Marco Pritoni, and Mary Ann Piette."Field Performance of Commercial Building Load Flexibility Using Model Predictive Control."8th International High Performance Buildings Conference at Purdue (2024). DOI

Mulayim, Ozan Baris, Lazlo Paul, Marco Pritoni, Anand Prakash, Malavikha Sudarshan, and Gabe Fierro."Large Language Models for the Creation and Use of Semantic Ontologies in Buildings: Requirements and Challenges."Proceedings of the 11th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation (2024) 312-317. DOI

Prakash, Anand, Flavia deAndrade Pereira, Mario Bergés, Marco Pritoni, and Burcu Akinci."Ontologies at Work: Analyzing Information Requirements for Model Predictive Control in Buildings."Proceedings of the 11th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation (2024) 214-218. DOI

2023

Liu, Jingjing, Lili Yu, Rongxin Yin, Mary Ann Piette, Marco Pritoni, Armando Casillas, and Peter Schwartz."Factors Influencing Building Demand Flexibility." (2023). DOI

Yin, Rongxin, Jingjing Liu, Mary Ann Piette, Jiarong Xie, Marco Pritoni, Armando Casillas, Lili Yu, and Peter Schwartz."Comparing simulated demand flexibility against actual performance in commercial office buildings."Building and Environment 243 (2023) 110663. DOI

Paul, Lazlo, Flavia deAndrade Pereira, Sang woo Ham, Marco Pritoni, Richard E Brown, and Jingjuan Feng."Open Building Operating System: an Open-Source Grid Responsive Control Platform for Buildings."ASHRAE Annual Conference 2023 (2023).

Sartori, Igor, Harald Taxt Walnum, Kristian S Skeie, Laurent Georges, Michael D Knudsen, Peder Bacher, José Candanedo, Anna-Maria Sigounis, Anand Prakash, Marco Pritoni, Jessica Granderson, Shiyu Yang, and Man Pun Wan."Sub-hourly measurement datasets from 6 real buildings: Energy use and indoor climate."Data in Brief 48 (2023) 109149. DOI

Chen, Zhelun, Zheng O'Neill, Jin Wen, Ojas Pradhan, Tao Yang, Xing Lu, Guanjing Lin, Shohei Miyata, Seungjae Lee, Chou Shen, Roberto Chiosa, Marco Savino Piscitelli, Alfonso Capozzoli, Franz Hengel, Alexander Kuhrer, Marco Pritoni, Wei Liu, John Claub, Yimin Chen, and Terry Herr."A review of data-driven fault detection and diagnostics for building HVAC systems."Applied Energy Vol.339 No..121030 (2023). DOI

Lin, Guanjing, Marco Pritoni, Yimin Chen, Raphael Vitti, Christopher Weyandt, and Jessica Granderson."Implementation and test of an automated control hunting fault correction algorithm."Energy & Buildings Vol.283 No..112796 (2023). DOI

Pereira, Flavia De Andrade, Marco Pritoni, Susana Martin-Toral, Donal Finn, and James O’Donnell."A semantics-driven framework for scalable demand flexibility control applications."Computing in Construction (2023). DOI

Paul, Lazlo, Sang woo Ham, Marco Pritoni, Donghan Kim, Richard E Brown, and Jingjuan Feng."Field Implementation of MPC for Heat Pump-Based Duel Fuel Systems in Small Commercial Buildings for Decarbonization."ASHRAE (2023).

Peffer, Therese, Gabe Fierro, Paul Raftery, Carlos Duarte Roa, Marco Pritoni, Michael Wetter, Anand Prakash, Lazlo Paul, and Erik Paulson."Skewering the silos: using Brick to enable portable analytics, modeling and controls in buildings."Center for the Built Environment (2023).

2022

Liu, Jingjing, Rongxin Yin, Lili Yu, Mary Ann Piette, Marco Pritoni, Armando Casillas, Jiarong Xie, Tianzhen Hong, Monica Neukomm, and Peter Schwartz."Defining and applying an electricity demand flexibility benchmarking metrics framework for grid-interactive efficient commercial buildings."Advances in Applied Energy 8 (2022) 100107. DOI