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

Putra, Handi Chandra, Tianzhen Hong, and Clinton Andrews."An ontology to represent synthetic building occupant characteristics and behavior."Automation in Construction 125 (2021) 103621. DOI

Wang, Zhe, Tianzhen Hong, Han Li, and Mary Ann Piette."Predicting city-scale daily electricity consumption using data-driven models."Advances in Applied Energy 2 (2021) 100025. DOI

Ferrando, Martina, Tianzhen Hong, and Francesco Causone."A simulation-based assessment of technologies to reduce heat emissions from buildings."Building and Environment 195 (2021) 107772. DOI

Helmns, Dre, David Blum, Armando Casillas, Anand Prakash, Jonathan Woolley, David Vernon, Caton Mande, Michael Woodcox, and Spencer M. Dutton."Towards a Techno-Economic Analysis of PCM-Integrated Hybrid HVAC Systems."6th International High Performance Buildings Conference at Purdue (2021).

Less, Brennan, Iain S. Walker, and Nuria Casquero-Modrego."Emerging Pathways to Upgrade the US Housing Stock: A Review of the Home Energy Upgrade Literature." (2021).

He, zhiyuan, Tianzhen Hong, and Siaw K. Chou."A framework for estimating the energy-saving potential of occupant behaviour improvement."Applied Energy 287 (2021) 116591. DOI

Xu, Yujie, Tianzhen Hong, Wanni Zhang, Zhaoyun Zeng, and Max Wei."Heat Vulnerability Index Development and Mapping."SimAUD 2021 (2021).

Carnieletto, Laura, Martina Ferrando, Lorenzo Teso, Kaiyu Sun, Wanni Zhang, Francesco Causone, Piercarlo Romagnoni, Angelo Zarrella, and Tianzhen Hong."Italian prototype building models for urban scale building performance simulation."Building and Environment 192 (2021) 107590. DOI

Shackelford, Jordan, and Alan K. Meier."Laboratory Evaluation of Tunable White LEDs for Circadian Lighting in Commercial Offices." (2021).

Kim, Janghyun, Kim Trenbath, Jessica Granderson, Yimin Chen, Eliot Crowe, Hayden Reeve, Sarah Newman, and Paul Ehrlich."Research challenges and directions in HVAC fault prevalence."Science and Technology for the Built Environment 27 (2021). DOI

Fuchs, Heidi, and Prakash Rao."Characterizing manufacturing wastewater in the United States for the purpose of analyzing energy requirements for reuse."Journal of Industrial Ecology (2021). DOI

Li, Haoran, Juan Hou, Tianzhen Hong, Yuemin Ding, and Natasa Nord."Energy, economic, and environmental analysis of integration of thermal energy storage into district heating systems using waste heat from data centres."Energy 219 (2021) 119582. DOI

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

Mathew, Paul A., Paulo Issler, and Nancy Wallace."Should commercial mortgage lenders care about energy efficiency? Lessons from a pilot study."Energy Policy 150 (2021). DOI

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

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

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).