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

Casillas, Armando, Yimin Chen, Jessica Granderson, Guanjing Lin, Zhelun Chen, Jin Wen, and Sen Huang."Development of high-fidelity air handling unit fault models for FDD innovation: lessons learned and recommendations."Journal of Building Performance Simulation 17.5 (2024) 615-630. DOI

Thanachareonkit, Anothai, Luis L Fernandes, Howdy Goudey, and Jacob C Jonsson."DIY Affordable Window Shading." (2024).

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).

Lu, Hongyou, Nan Zhou, Hon LeungCurt Wong, and X Zhang."Evaluating Net-Zero Emission Pathways for China’s Cement Industry."ECEEE 2024 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency (2024). 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

Earni, Shankar, Amy Pevzner, Paul Sheaffer, Prakash Rao, Jeff Davis, Josh Weissert, Mike Christianson, and Katie Roessler."Field Validation of a Pilot-scale Black Liquor Membrane for Water Removal at Ahlstrom-Munksjö Paper Mill in Mosinee, WI." (2024).

Earni, Shankar, Amy Pevzner, Unique Karki, Paul Sheaffer, Prakash Rao, Ross Charland, and Josh Weissert."Field Validation of Electrochemical Water Filtration System on an Open Loop Cooling Tower at Nissan Manufacturing Plant in Canton, Mississippi." (2024). DOI

Earni, Shankar, Amy Pevzner, Unique Karki, Prakash Rao, Ross Charland, and Josh Weissert."Field Validation of Electrochemical Water Filtration System on an Open Loop Cooling Tower at Toyota MotorManufacturing Plant in Blue Springs,Mississippi." (2024).

Earni, Shankar, Unique Karki, Paul Sheaffer, Prakash Rao, CD Nayak, and Amit Kanungo."Field Validation of Electrocoagulation Treatment for Oily Wastewater at Cleveland-Cliffs Steel Mill in Cleveland, Ohio." (2024).

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

Zhao, Haoran, Iain S Walker, William W Delp, and Brett C Singer."Performance and usage of mechanical residential kitchen ventilation."ASHRAE Winter 2024 (2024).

Malik, Jeetika, Tianzhen Hong, Max Wei, and Sea Rotmann."Prioritize energy sufficiency to decarbonize our buildings."Nature Human Behaviour 8.3 (2024) 406-410. DOI

Fernandes, Luis L, and Cynthia Regnier."Zero Net Energy Retrofits for Small Commercial Offices: Zero Net Energy Package and Tubular Daylighting Device FLEXLAB Test Results Report." (2024).

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

Queiroz, Natália, Luis L Fernandes, and Fernando OscarRutt Pereira."Comparison of Fast Daylighting Climate-Based Simulation Methods for Parametric Design: Two-Phase, Three-Phase Method and Path Tracing."Architectural Engineering and Design Management (2023) 1 - 19. 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

Hasanbeigi, Ali, Cecilia Springer, Jibran Zuberi, Hongyou Lu, and Nan Zhou."Electrifying Industrial Heating in China." (2023).

Crowe, Eliot, Yimin Chen, Hayden Reeve, David Yuill, Amir Ebrahimifakhar, Yuxuan Chen, Lucas Troup, Amanda Smith, and Jessica Granderson."Empirical Analysis of the Prevalence of HVAC Faults in Commercial Buildings." (2023). 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

Wan, Shanshan, Mengnan Zhao, Yimin Chen, Shuyue Yang, Dongwei Qiu, and James Lo."A novel data-driven relationship inference approach for automatic data tagging in building heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems."Building and Environment Vol. No..246 (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).