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.
Colum 1 +
Colum 2 +
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

2005

Prasher, Ravi S, Prajesh Bhattacharya, and Patrick E Phelan."Thermal Conductivity of Nanoscale Colloidal Solutions (Nanofluids)."Physical Review Letters 94.025901-1 – 025901-4. (2005).

Wray, Craig P."Tools & Guidelines for Commissioning Small Commercial Duct Systems." (2005).

Dickerhoff, Darryl J, Iain S Walker, and Max H Sherman."Validating and Improving the DeltaQ Duct Leakage Test."ASHRAE Transactions 110 - Pt. 2 (2005) 741-751.

2004

Wetter, Michael."BuildOpt - A new building energy simulation program that is built on smooth models."Building and Environment 40.8 (2004). DOI

Zhou, Nan, Weijun Gao, Masaru Nishida, Hiroki Kitayama, and Toshio Ojima."Field Study on the Thermal Environment of Passive Cooling System in RC Building."Energy and Buildings Journal 36 (2004) 8.

Faulkner, David, William J Fisk, Douglas P Sullivan, and Seung-Min Lee."Ventilation Efficiencies and Thermal Comfort Results of a Desk-Edge-Mounted Task Ventilation System."Indoor Air (Supplement 8) 14.Supplement s8 (2004) 92-97. DOI

Wetter, Michael, and Elijah Polak."A convergent optimization method using pattern search algorithms with adaptive precision simulation."Building Services Engineering Research and Technology 25.4 (2004) 327-338. DOI

Bhattacharya, Prajesh, P Vijayan, T Tang, S Nara, Patrick E Phelan, Ravi S Prasher, J Wang, and David W Song."Evaluation of the Temperature Oscillation Technique to Calculate Thermal Conductivity of Water and Systematic Measurement of the Thermal Conductivity of Aluminum Oxide – Water Nanofluiids."International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition, (2004).

Payne, Christopher T, and Beverly Dyer."Federal participation in LEED."Greenbuild 2004 (2004).

Kohler, Christian, Howdy Goudey, and Dariush K Arasteh."A First-Generation Prototype Dynamic Residential Window." (2004) 11.

Zhou, Nan, Chris Marnay, Ryan M Firestone, Weijun Gao, and Masaru Nishida."The Potential for Distributed Generation in Japanese Prototype Buildings: A DER-CAM Analysis of Policy, Tariff Design, Building Energy Use, and Technology Development." (2004) 75.

Wang, Liping, and Angui Li."A numerical study of vertical solar chimney for Enhancing stack ventilation in buildings."The 21st International Conference on Passive and Low Energy Architecture, The Netherlands (2004).

Wetter, Michael, and Elijah Polak."Building Design Optimization Using a Convergent Pattern Search Algorithm with Adaptive Precision Simulations."Energy and Buildings 37 (2004) 603-612.

Golove, William H, Richard E Brown, and Edward Holt."Guide to Purchasing Green Power: Renewable Electricity, Renewable Energy Certificates and On-Site Renewable Generation." (2004).

Xu, Tengfang T, and Ming-Shan Jeng."Laboratory Evaluation of Fan-Filter Units Aerodynamic and Energy Performance."Journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society 47.1 (2004) 5. DOI

Griffith, Brent T, and Peter G Ellis."Photovoltaic and Solar Thermal Modeling with the EnergyPlus Calculation Engine."World Renewable Energy Congress VIII and Expo (2004).

Bazjanac, Vladimir."Virtual Building Environments - Applying Information Modeling to Buildings."European Conference on Product and Process Modeling in the Building and Construction Industry (ECPPM) 2004 (2004).

Wetter, Michael, and Jonathan A Wright."A comparison of deterministic and probabilistic optimization algorithms for nonsmooth simulation-based optimization ."Building and Environment 39.8 (2004) 989-999. DOI

O'Donnell, James, Elmer Morrissey, Marcus Keane, and Vladimir Bazjanac."BuildingPI: A Future Tool for Building Life Cycle Analysis."SimBuild 2004 1st International Conference of IBPSA-USA (2004).

Diamond, Richard C, and Mithra M Moezzi."Changing trends: A brief history of the U.S. household consumption of energy, water, food, beverages and tobacco."Proceedings of the 10 (2004) 1-12.

Chantrasrisalai, Chanvit, and Daniel E Fisher."Comparative Analysis of One-Dimensional Slat-Type Blind Models."SimBuild 2004, Building Sustainability and Performance Through Simulation (2004).

Akbari, Hashem, Paul H Berdahl, Ronnen M Levinson, Stephen Wiel, Andre Desjarlais, William A Miller, Nancy Jenkins, Arthur H Rosenfeld, and Chris Scruton."Cool colored roofs to save energy and improve air quality."ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, August 22-27, 2004 1 (2004) 1-16.

Crabtree, Peter, Nick Kyriakopedi, Evan Mills, Philip Haves, Roland J Otto, Mary Ann Piette, Peng Xu, Richard C Diamond, Joseph J Deringer, and Chuck Frost."Developing a next generation community college curriculum for energy efficiency high performance building operators."2004 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (2004).

Huang, Yu Joe, Robin Mitchell, Stephen E Selkowitz, Dariush K Arasteh, and Robert D Clear."Development of Trade-Off Equations for EnergyStar Windows."SimBuild 2004 (2004).

Huang, Yu Joe, Robin Mitchell, and Stephen E Selkowitz."Development of Trade-Off Equations for EnergyStar Windows."SimBuild 2004, Building Sustainability and Performance Through Simulation (2004).