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

2024

Xu, Yujie, Pouya Vahmani, Andrew Jones, and Tianzhen Hong."Anthropogenic heat from buildings in Los Angeles County: A simulation framework and assessment."Sustainable Cities and Society 107 (2024) 105468. DOI

Krelling, Amanda Fraga, Roberto Lamberts, Jeetika Malik, Wanni Zhang, Kaiyu Sun, and Tianzhen Hong."Defining weather scenarios for simulation-based assessment of thermal resilience of buildings under current and future climates: A case study in Brazil."Sustainable Cities and Society 107 (2024) 105460. DOI

Liang, Wei, Han Li, Sicheng Zhan, Adrian Chong, and Tianzhen Hong."Energy flexibility quantification of a tropical net-zero office building using physically consistent neural network-based model predictive control."Advances in Applied Energy 14 (2024) 100167. DOI

Jain, Anubhav, Tianzhen Hong, Mary Ann Piette, Michael D Sohn, Will Gorman, Alexandre Moreira, Lazlo Paul, Haitam Laarabi, and Maher Alghalayini."Frontiers in Energy Storage: Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence (AI)." (2024).

Wu, Jiyuan, Lan Wang, Tianzhen Hong, Qinran Hu, and Wei Wang."Revealing and optimizing the design of cover installation for outdoor units of air conditioners through CFD simulations and thermodynamic modeling."Journal of Building Engineering 87 (2024) 109014. DOI

Coraci, Davide, Silvio Brandi, Tianzhen Hong, and Alfonso Capozzoli."An innovative heterogeneous transfer learning framework to enhance the scalability of deep reinforcement learning controllers in buildings with integrated energy systemsAbstract."Building Simulation 17.5 (2024) 739 - 770. DOI

Lee, Sang Hoon, Tianzhen Hong, Minh Le, Lujuana Medina, Yujie Xu, Alastair Robinson, and Mary Ann Piette."Assessment of energy and thermal resilience performance to inform climate mitigation of multifamily buildings in disadvantaged communities."Sustainable Cities and Society 104 (2024) 105319. 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

Pan, Xiyu, Yujie Xu, and Tianzhen Hong."Surrogate modelling for urban building energy simulation based on the bidirectional long short-term memory model."Journal of Building Performance Simulation (2024) 1 - 19. DOI

Li, Han, Giuseppe Pinto, Marco Savino Piscitelli, Alfonso Capozzoli, and Tianzhen Hong."Building thermal dynamics modeling with deep transfer learning using a large residential smart thermostat dataset."Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 130 (2024) 107701. DOI

Shackelford, Jordan, Spencer M Dutton, Cynthia Regnier, Wanyu R Chan, and Alastair Robinson."Modeled Retrofit Package Performance for Schools." (2024). DOI

Webster, Brett, Lucas Toffoli, Martha Campbell, Aven Satre-Meloy, Leslie Badger, Alison Donovan, Damon Lane, Kevin McGrath, Eric Wilson, Janet Reyna, Cheryn Metzger, and Tyler Pilet."Accelerating Residential Building Decarbonization: Market Guidance to Scale Zero-Carbon-Aligned Buildings."Advanced Building Construction (2024).

Park, Jiwon, Kwang Ho Lee, Sang Hoon Lee, and Tianzhen Hong."Benefits assessment of cool skin and ventilated cavity skin: Saving energy and mitigating heat and grid stress."Building and Environment 247 (2024) 111027. DOI

Haddad, Shamila, Wanni Zhang, Riccardo Paolini, Kai Gao, Muzahim Altheeb, Abdulrahman Al Mogirah, Abdullatif BinMoammar, Tianzhen Hong, Ansar Khan, C Cartalis, A Polydorose, and Mattheos Santamouris."Quantifying the Energy Impact of Heat Mitigation in Cities: A Catalyst for Building Energy Saving."Nature Cities (2024).

Haddad, Shamila, Wanni Zhang, Riccardo Paolini, Kai Gao, Muzahim Altheeb, Abdulrahman Al Mogirah, Abdullatif BinMoammar, Tianzhen Hong, Ansar Khan, Constantinos Cartalis, Anastasios Polydoros, and Mattheos Santamouris."Quantifying the energy impact of heat mitigation technologies at the urban scale."Nature Cities 1.1 (2024) 62 - 72. DOI

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

2023

Munankarmi, Prateek, Eric Wilson, Janet L Reyna, Elaina Present, Stacey Rothgeb, and Aven Satre-Meloy."Modeled Results of Four Residential Energy Efficiency Measure Packages for Deriving Advanced Building Construction Research Targets." (2023). DOI

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

Wetter, Michael, and Matthias Sulzer."A call to action for building energy system modelling in the age of decarbonization."Journal of Building Performance Simulation (2023) 1 - 11. DOI

Shackelford, Jordan, Alastair Robinson, Cynthia Regnier, and Sang Hoon Lee."Getting Beyond Widgets: Performance of Efficient Indoor Air Quality System Retrofit Packages for Schools." (2023). DOI

Grahovac, Milica, Paul Ehrlich, Jianjun Hu, and Michael Wetter."Model-based data center cooling controls comparative co-design."Science and Technology for the Built Environment (2023). DOI

Maier, Laura, Christoph Nytsch-Geusen, Lucas Westermann, Kushagra Mathur, Michael Wetter, and Dirk Muller."Comparative Study and Validation of Photovoltaic Model Formulations for the IBPSA Modelica Library based on Rooftop Measurement Data." (2023).

Zanetti, Ettore, David Blum, and Michael Wetter."Control development and sizing analysis for a 5th generation district heating and cooling network using Modelica."15th International Modelica Conference (2023).

Maccarini, Alessandro, Michael Wetter, Davide Varesano, Martin Bloemendal, Alireza Afshari, and Angelo Zarrella."Low-order aquifer thermal energy storage model for geothermal system simulation."15th International Modelica Conference (2023).

Hong, Tianzhen, Jeetika Malik, Amanda Krelling, William O'Brien, Kaiyu Sun, Roberto Lamberts, and Max Wei."Ten questions concerning thermal resilience of buildings and occupants for climate adaptation."Building and Environment 244 (2023) 110806. DOI